Lessons of the Passion

By Elizabeth Foss
Herald Columnist
(From the issue of 4/7/05)

As I watched "The Passion of the Christ" on Good Friday afternoon, I was struck by one thing most of all: the pain Mary felt when her Child was persecuted by people who didn’t know who He was. How difficult it must have been for a woman who knew Him as intimately as a mother knows a child to see the pain inflicted by people who didn’t understand. Mary was a deeply spiritual woman, arguably the most spiritually sensitive woman ever. Her pain was palpable.

I wondered aloud about Mary’s pain when I spoke to a dear friend the next day. She and her husband rescued a child from a wretched orphanage in Russia years ago. Since then, they have worked mightily and prayed fervently to help their son overcome the devastating effects of both prenatal life and early childhood in a place that seemed all but forgotten by God. The scars remain and this little boy is challenged by both the simple and complex relationships of daily life. If it requires emotional output, it is difficult for him.

His mother has borne so much of his pain. Every time a child is unkind to him, every time he is turned away because his intensity or his activity makes someone else uncomfortable, her heart breaks again. What she wants most from people is compassion. She wants to cry out, as they flog her little boy, "Stop! Don’t you understand? There is a child in there, a child who is precious to me. A child created in the likeness of God himself. Won’t you help me rescue him from the snares of the devil?"

As Easter dawned, my attention turned to another little boy. This is a child whose spirit is so pure and so innocent that listening to him recite the Lord’s Prayer before dinner moved me to tears. This child has no comprehension whatsoever of any evil that taints our world. In his 6-year-old body is a soul so beautiful it’s startling. But he is trapped by an inability to communicate. Though he recites the Lord’s Prayer beautifully and with apparent understanding of its meaning, he also introduced himself to me four times that day. I’ve known him since the day he was born. When he is frightened or surprised by a change in routine or an unfamiliar face, he is capable of the loudest, wildest tantrum I’ve ever witnessed. And sometimes, we don’t even know what it is that hurts him so. But I do know what causes his mother pain.

Day after day, she bravely meets the challenge of raising this child. She tries to buffer her other children from the disruption their brother causes. She tries to juggle the opinions of so many specialists, none of whom will ever share the intimacy she does with her dear son. She tries to remain optimistic and faithful, all while wondering what the future holds for the pure, beautiful, distant child. And she grieves.

She grieves for the birthday party invitations he’ll never receive. The playmates who will never share his joy. The old friends who don’t understand her silence and her distance but who understand even less the reality of her life. She wishes someone would step up and help her son carry his cross. She prays for compassionate souls who will share the burden.

What she knows and what the mother of the other child knows is that their children bless others far more than most people can imagine. When a parent takes the time to teach a child to relate to someone who is challenging, she has opened a whole new world for the typical child. Our children — all our children — need to learn how to be Christ to one another. Christ moved far from his comfort zone. While it is inappropriate to throw our children out to relate to prostitutes and tax collectors, it is wholly appropriate and even desirable to help them learn to be compassionate toward children who are less able than they are.

One of the most difficult things about raising a child with emotional or communication disorders is the fact that they look like typical children. We’d never expect a child in a wheelchair to get up and play soccer with the rest of the kids, yet we expect children with hidden disabilities to rise to the typical standard of behavior. And when they don’t, we discard them. We shield our children from them. We cast them aside. We flog them and we pierce the hearts of their mothers.

How much better our world would be — our children would be — if we taught them to assume the best about a person and to work from there toward understanding. How much better we would be as parents if we saw in the eyes of the mother of a challenged child the eyes of Our Lady; and we remembered that her Son commended her into our care. How much more real joy we would find in the Easter season if we truly lived as if the lesson of the Passion is compassion.

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