Welcoming & Embracing the Stranger: Lenten Reflections with the Artwork of James Tissot

March 16, 2026 - Monday of the Fourth Week of Lent

On a recent Thursday morning, I boarded the NJTransit bus to travel up South Orange Avenue through the Central Ward of Newark, New Jersey. Upon sitting, I immediately became aware of a vitriolic stream of profanities issuing from a woman talking on her cellphone in the back row. The conversation went on for blocks as the woman railed against all the people who had abused and mistreated her…until we pulled up to a local high school and the conversation abruptly cut off: “I can’t talk anymore. I gotta go to school.”

Then, walking past me to the back door came a girl who looked about 15 or 16 years old. All the pain, all the anger, all the hurt, all the wounds that were being announced to the bus that morning all resided in the heart of a suffering child. And what began as the mild annoyance of a noisy bus ride suddenly became deeply, deeply sad.

I thought of that girl when I read today's readings: “new heavens and a new earth...there shall always be rejoicing and happiness...[n]o longer shall the sound of weeping be heard.” That is God’s promise to the Jews through the Prophet Isaiah, but it is also his promise to me, and to you, and to the girl on the bus: that somehow, in the midst of the mess of human suffering, God will make all things new, and whole, and beautiful.

Such a sentiment can teeter on platitudinous; but it need not be. Faith in God’s redemptive power does not remove suffering but, paradoxically, allows us to enter more deeply into the mystery of suffering in our midst. On this Lenten weekday, the readings offer us the hope of future glory so that we can approach those sufferings and sorrows of our life with eyes of faith, trusting that we encounter Christ daily in the people around us: Christ suffering, Christ wounded, Christ hurting, Christ saddened, Christ broken, Christ crying, Christ heartbroken, Christ dying, Christ in the 15-year-old on the city bus. 

The reality of suffering is undeniable, the redemptive promise of God irrefutable. Let us live this Lenten season in the tension between the two—in deep solidarity with the suffering Christ, with whole-hearted faith in his coming salvation—so that when Easter arrives, the Paschal Mystery—that passage from death into life—may not be something we learn of by hearsay, but a profound mystery that we experience ourselves.

O God, who renew the world through mysteries beyond all telling, grant, we pray, that your Church may be guided by your eternal design and not be deprived of your help in this present age. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. (Roman Missal)

Br. Bruno Mello, OSB, Graduate Student, ICSST

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