Christ’s Glorified Wounds
I GOT INTO QUITE AN ARGUMENT WITH A PATIENT the other week. I generally avoid arguing with patients — it isn’t good practice. But she was truly exasperating me. She had a problem that was severely bothering her, that was beyond my ability to manage, and which therefore required a specialist. The specialist she needed was readily available via a walk-in clinic. All she needed to do was ask a family member to drive her over there — a trip of about thirty minutes.
She absolutely refused. “They won’t want to do that,” she said. “They work. I don’t want to be a bother.”
“You’re not a bother,” I said. “You’re their mother. You changed their diapers for years. They can drive you to a doctor’s appointment. Just call and ask.”
“No. I won’t be a burden.”
“It’s not a burden,” I said, snapping a bit, realizing even as I said it that my affect and my words were not really in alignment, “to take care of someone you love.”
“Hmmph,” she said, and refused to speak about it any further.
A few weeks later I saw her again, this time with her son. “Oh, gosh, you’re Rosemary!” he said. “Mom hasn’t stopped talking about how great you are.”
“What?” I said blankly. I certainly remembered the interaction, but “great” would have been the last word I would have used to describe it. “Unprofessional,” maybe. “Shambolic,” perhaps — very seldom do I mess up so badly that a patient stops speaking to me.
“You were the only one who was able to help her! She saw half a dozen doctors about this pain, and you were the first one who took it seriously, examined the area, told her she had to go see a specialist, and then told her how to find a specialist! And the specialist fixed it! She’s so grateful.”
“But I was so mean to you!” I said to my patient, who was nodding along with her son, smiling. “I felt terrible about that. I really got snippy.”
“You were right, and I didn’t want to listen,” she said. “I was afraid of being a burden, but Joe didn’t think it was a bother at all.”
“Definitely not,” said her son, and squeezed her hand.
I thought about this encounter for days after — about how what I perceived as a failure was received by my patient with gratitude; how what she saw as a burden was received by her son as an opportunity to love.
Icons of the Risen Christ always show his wounds — his bloody hands, feet, and side. It’s a little odd, on one level — he is risen from the dead, his body restored! Why were not they healed as the rest of his body was healed? Why would the wounds remain?
But this is the wrong way of looking. Christ’s wounds remain because Love is eternal, and no act of Love can ever be erased. Christ’s wounds do not vanish, but are transfigured, and glorified.
Which brings me back to my patient, and her son. Joe’s everyday sacrifice (missing a few hours of work to drive his mom to the doctor) transfigured, in some small way, their relationship. Her disability and need, her woundedness, all were transfigured by her choice to accept her son’s offer of love. Together, their wounds were glorified.
One doesn’t want to make an idol of suffering. It’s not, generally, something to seek out on its own, and faithful Christians can and should seek to ease the suffering of others.
But as we live and grow in the life of Christ, our suffering is no longer only suffering. It is a chance to enter, with our Savior, into the ways Love Himself suffers, and sacrifices, and redeems. Our pain is a door through which we can share in His Glorified Wounds.
