By Bishop Greg Kelly
Special to The Texas Catholic

What I heard often in the homilies and talks yesterday and today, in the Mass celebrated in the Siro-Malabar Rite this morning, and in a talk to priests and bishops by Bishop Danny Flores of Brownsville, is the importance of the suffering of Christ and our suffering.

Bishop Flores spoke of the poverty of Christ in coming and taking on the vulnerability of human life in this world, pouring Himself out for our sake and looking for people willing to receive Him and become like Him in pouring themselves out for others. Jesus was accessible to everyone, allowed people to come close to him and touch Him, even those who would seize him and kill Him.

Bishop Flores said that in our world people want to control everything, not have to depend on anyone, not be affected by the suffering of others, and that we live in a world that constantly invents new ways to reject people. In that way of thinking, poverty and vulnerability are realities to be shunned or fixed, to be overcome and gotten away from. Jesus’ whole ministry was to pour Himself out for others and not protect Himself from their vulnerability and suffering. We are to do the same, being willing to receive this gift constantly from Him, to look for Him where He has told us He would be: in the Tabernacle (“this is my Body”), and in the poor: whatever we do or fail to do to them, we do or fail to do to Him.

At the Last Supper Jesus poured Himself, His entire life, into the bread and wine given to His disciples, and given to us now, so that we can do what He did: pour ourselves out for others and be the vulnerable presence of God in the world that He was in His ministry: “For you know the gracious act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that for your sake he became poor although he was rich, so that by his poverty you might become rich” (2 Cor. 8:9) 

Faithfully yours in Christ,

Most Reverend Gregory Kelly, V.G.

Bishop Greg Kelly is the auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Dallas.