February 5, 2025 // Memorial of Saint Agatha, Virgin and Martyr

Read the Word // Open your Bible to today’s First Reading: Hebrews 12:4-7, 11-15

Reflect on the Word // 

I had known loneliness in the past, but not loneliness like this. I was heavy hearted from a difficult and hidden situation—not one that I could speak to many about. My exhaustion from it was so much that I could physically feel it some days, being unable to kneel from pain. As I came into the chapel that day for 7 a.m. Mass, I finally related to our Lord how heavily tempted I was to despair in this season and how I could no longer handle the weight of it in this isolation. As the silence passed, I expected some sort of intense “Army boot camp” response of,  “I get it, but toughen up, get it together, and keep going.” 

But Christ, in his wisdom and kindness, did no such thing. He did, however, bring me to Gethsemane where He experienced immense temptation, similar to the temptation described in today’s First Reading: “In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood” (Hebrews 12:4). I saw there with Him that God is no foreigner to my suffering under temptation and pressure in darkness. He is no foreigner to feeling alone in it as the disciples, too tired from sorrow, fell asleep rather than stayed awake with Him (see Luke 22:45). I no longer feel alone knowing that Christ has suffered in every way that I do. Christ’s love here moves the deepest part in us as human beings: the need for connection, for relationship, to be seen and understood in our suffering. To have Christ not only as a model for suffering but as a true companion. 

While we may not have struggled to the point of shedding blood, we can sit with grateful hearts knowing that our strength and joy comes from the One Who willingly entered into our loneliness and darkness out of absolute and total love. We can know that we are children of God, and our suffering is His suffering.

Relate to the Lord // Where do you need Christ to be a companion in your suffering?