Paper cuts are painful. Biting your tongue can be excruciating. Stubbed toes, a stinging funny bone, chapped lips—our bodies can sustain all sorts of little annoying and painful injuries.
While small, these pains can dominate our days if we let them, distracting us from what is really important in life. We can easily become complainers.
This is the bodily state that our God chose to take on for himself.
God became incarnate (meaning “in the flesh”) and everything that comes with it. He experienced for himself all those little, annoying pains as well as far more serious pains during his passion and death.
Why?
To redeem them.
Every pain, no matter how annoying, finds new meaning in Christ.
How?
Christ shared in that pain, too. He felt pain just as we feel pain today, no matter how great or small. Any pain, no matter how annoying, finds new meaning in Christ. Think about it. Every time we experience some bodily pain, we can recall that our God endured it, too.
An Angelus Meditation
Think about your body right now. Are any small wounds or pains bothering you? Try the old practice of “offering it up.” It used to be a common practice among Catholic parents to tell their complaining children to “offer it up,” meaning offer up your pain for the souls in purgatory. This practice helps us and those for whom we offer up our pain because we recognize that our Lord, too, experienced pains just like ours and worse. In this way, we unite our pain with his. We’re not alone in the pain that comes with being fleshly creatures. God became flesh, too, and experienced that pain just like us.
This is an excerpt from Praying the Angelus: Find Joy, Peace, and Purpose in Everyday Life by Jared Dees.
