How to Be with People in Their Suffering

Sometimes it seems that what we fear most is suffering and that we will go to any lengths to avoid it.  That reality applies not just to our own suffering, but also to that of others.  It is incredibly difficult to be with people in their suffering because it means entering into their suffering with them.  That is what the word compassion means: its linguistic roots literally mean to suffer with.

When we refuse to accept the suffering of others, we are unable to be compassionate.  Instead of entering into their suffering with them and showing them that they are loved, thereby giving them hope in their suffering, we too often side with the voice of condemnation.  We become like Job's friends.  We try to fix the problem or point out the errors rather than loving others.

Job's friends looked at his suffering and assumed that he must have done something wrong to deserve such evil to fall upon him.  His friends rebuked him for being weak in the face of his suffering and for questioning the ways of God.  They told him he must have sinned against God to be thus condemned to suffer.  With each monologue, they became more and more severe in their words against him.

Why?

Is it because they wanted it to be Job's fault so that they could believe that such evil would never befall them so long as they persist in what they believe to be a just way of life?

If we believe that others suffer as a result of their sins and failings, it allows us to exalt ourselves and to give ourselves the security that such suffering would never happen to us.  We are not humble enough to accept that we also could suffer at any time.  We are not humble enough simply to enter in to their suffering.

Think then of Christ on His journey to Calvary.  He deserved compassion even more than Job.  Who offered it to Him?

Simon was forced to help Him carry the Cross and rendered him that service with great reluctance.  Veronica rushed out of the crowd to wipe His eyes with her veil, a tiny offering in the face of such great suffering.  The women of Jerusalem wept for Him, showing they were willing to enter into His suffering with Him.  Yet it was His Mother who did most for Him on that journey.

Our Lady did nothing if you think in terms of worldly actions.  She did not help Him carry His cross, she did not wipe His eyes, perhaps she did not even weep for Him.  What then did she do?

She offered herself to Him.  She gave Him the gift of her presence, full and entire, holding nothing back.  She was not afraid to look at Him in His suffering.  She was not afraid to accept His suffering as the will of the Father, joining herself to that sacrifice of love to the Father.

We likewise can offer ourselves, giving the gift of our presence—and of Christ's presence within us—to those who suffer.  We can see them in their suffering, giving them hope to carry on.  When we cannot take away their suffering, we can lighten it by our love, accepting it with them as the will of the Father that will bring them to their own resurrection.

There Is No Condemnation

The idea of needing to earn God's love keeps rousing its ugly head here and there in various ways, revealing an insidious monster that penetrates souls and prevents them from receiving the abundant life Christ promised.  Of course, spoken in such clear fashion, the idea is laughable.  Who could really believe they needed to earn God's love?  If you ask people, likely most if not all would know in their heads the right answer.  Yet, as the prophet Jeremiah put it, "more torturous than all else is the human heart" (17:9).

This false belief that we need to earn God's love appears beneath the visage of everything from scrupulosity and perfectionism to affected piety and hypocrisy.  In each case you can trace back the problem to the root sin of pride.

Diagnosing pride's sinfulness in this case, however, merely returns us to the need to be humble enough to receive God's love and hence back to the beginning of the vicious cycle of needing to earn God's love.  Yet, as Saint Paul said: "There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus" (Rom 8:1).  Also, Jesus Himself says: "Is there no one who condemns you?  Neither do I condemn you" (see John 8:10-11).

Certainly pride exists within our hearts, but let us look beyond this sin to other forces at work in our subconscious minds and hearts.  As Americans, we live in a country founded on a principle often known as the "Protestant work ethic."  That idea essentially amounts to the need to work hard that we might achieve everything by our own efforts (and hence extends easily to spirituality with the idea of needing to earn even God's approval and love).

Furthermore, American ideals arose out of the principles of the Enlightenment whose thinkers essentially eschewed Christianity for Secular Humanism.  Instead of God being responsible for all that was good and the sole arbiter of goodness, mankind took that role for these thinkers who believed in the supremacy of reason and science.  Isn't it ironic that such a perspective would then invade Catholicism itself which Enlightenment thinkers had rejected?  Yet to me it seems it has: we have somehow absorbed this false idea that we of our own power must achieve human perfection.  Yes, that is what it means to believe that we must earn God's love: it means to believe that we are responsible for our own sanctification rather than merely accepting His free gift to us.  Take that to its logical extreme and it means that we believe we do not need God; we essentially make ourselves our own god.

Before you find my perspective too cynical, however, let us look even deeper into the human psyche.  As intelligent beings, we naturally seek the cause for every effect.  Consequently, when some negative emotion assaults our hearts, we immediately want to know the purpose.  If we feel bad, we want to know why.  We want to know whose fault it is.  We are not content to remain ignorant.  Hence we either look outward for a scapegoat, blaming someone or something else, or we look inward, blaming ourselves.

The latter perspective, seen in the light of religious tradition, becomes that much-referenced catholic guilt.  The phrase is suitable because of the meaning of the word catholic: universal: we all feel guilt when we know we have transgressed our moral code.

One common response to that guilt is to lower one's standards to the point at which one can no longer transgress them and thus cannot experience that negative emotion.  For this reason, many believe that we ought to repudiate religion, and specifically Catholicism, because it causes people to feel guilty, which leads to a vicious cycle of psychologically-unhealthy responses to spirituality.  Now I would argue that by that same logic we ought to outlaw food because it causes people to feel cravings, which lead them to overindulge and become gluttonous.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, someone might become so focused on pious practices as to be rigidly bound up in them and demand that all others abide by the same rules.  Everyone else thus must be wrong in order to preserve that fragile shell of security formed by legalism.

As Aristotle so aptly pointed out, the virtue must lie between the two extremes.  What, then, is the answer?

Love.

Perhaps that might seem too simple an answer.  Let me put it another way:

God.

Yes.  God is Love.  Therefore, we can say also that Love is God.

Consequently, if your encounter with the Truth has been anything less than an encounter with Love than you have not truly found God.  Furthermore, I'll wager a guess that if you find within yourself on some level the belief that you must earn God's love that it is because you believe also that you are unlovable.

Do you recognize that lie within yourself?

That is the lie masked by the belief that you must earn God's love along with all its various permutations.  If you believe that you must do something in order to be loved, whether by God or by anyone else, then you believe that you are lovable based upon what you do rather than who you are.

Modern psychology will happily point out to you the importance of your childhood development for the formation of your image of God.  Now before you happily blame your parents so you don't have to feel guilty about having a false idea of God (as you do if you believe you must earn His love), let me point out to you that they could not give you what they themselves had never received.  How could they show you that you were loved unconditionally if they had not themselves believed in and received unconditional love?  In this fallen world few of us have received that love.  Perhaps we flee it because it is too much for us.  Perhaps we flee it because we are afraid.

Fear.

If you look again at those two responses to guilt, you might see fear operating beneath them both.  The same is true for the idea that we must earn God's love: for if we can earn it, then we are in control of it, and it is far more comfortable to think of being in control than of facing the infinite God who is the Unknown who yet stoops down to us that we might know Him.

 "Perfect love casts out fear." (1 John 4:18)

Only God's infinite and unconditional love can cast the fear out from our hearts, but we must let Him, and that letting Him seems to be a life-long process.  It seems to take so much to unravel the knots we tie about ourselves.  Sometimes perhaps it may seem futile and we may wonder why He allows us to tangle ourselves so deeply in the lies of the enemy, but there we are left with the mystery of iniquity, the mystery proclaimed in the Easter Exultet as "O Happy Fault!"  Only a God of infinite love could bring good out of the dark shadow that sin and shame cast over our hearts.

Take courage, then, in whatever darkness you walk and listen to the wisdom of Saint John Paul II whose feast day we celebrate today: "I plead with you — never, ever give up on hope, never doubt, never tire, and never become discouraged.  Be not afraid."

It takes great courage to open your heart to God and to allow yourself to be vulnerable enough to encounter Him in the depths of your being where He speaks love through His silent presence, imperceptible to your senses.

Will you let yourself be loved?  Sometimes I think that is the most difficult thing in all the world.

Thus I leave you with the resounding words of Saint John Paul II, taken from Christ's own words in Scripture:

"Duc in altum!  Put out into the deep!  Be not afraid."

Buried Gold

There is so much to bury these days:
Old friends, old loves, dreams, the lamp
At the end of the lane, petals soft and damp
From sweaty hands, voice so loved, so dear,
Expectations of what may be, and fear
Of what may not, the pursuit of happiness
Spent in toil and grasping, fingers that hold
Riches that turn to dirt and grime and mold...

Mound it all up in the dust, pack it down,
Stamp the ground with your boots,
Water it with your tears. Somewhere roots
Will grow. Somehow the seed that dies
Will sprout forth—somehow warmth will rise
To touch the dead hard soil—wither lies
That a bud may blossom and keep tryst
For all that is buried in the heart of Christ.

Incarnation

Carved wooden altar—wood of manger;

Gold glimmers tabernacle—golden straw.

Stare anew: the sight becomes a stranger

As the piercing star the shepherds saw.

Breath of oxen—breath of God's own life

Exhaled in layers of dust and grime—

There daily work and pain and strife

Did long await His bursting into time.

His two bright eyes stare, imploring

Hearts sheltered, cold, and dim,

Even as we come to kneel, adoring

God in flesh—blind to sight of Him

Who comes to break our shroud of fears,

Of dreams too small, to catch our tears

In tiny hands outstretched. He smiles

To see those weighted down with trials

Stop for one brief moment, darkly gaze

With blank stare at the brightest blaze

Hid in swaddling clothes, flesh to give

To all: to teach us, newborn, to live.

 

Reaching Out

So often fear binds us in our interactions with others. We find ways to shield ourselves: alcohol or virtual communications or certain attitudes and ways of presenting ourselves to the world that hide our true selves.

Of what are we so afraid?

We are afraid of rejection certainly. We are afraid of misunderstandings. Yet perhaps we are even more afraid of vulnerability.

What if we are more afraid that others will see us for who we really are instead of seeing the facade we present to the world? Do we fear more that they shall see the face behind the mask and the heart aching for love when we want to pretend that we are indomitable?

There is fear too of forcing others to respond out of politeness. Do we dare reach out to another who may feel himself bound to answer even when he does not wish to? If we make the initial effort, we never know if the other cares to deepen our relationship. So sometimes we wait, hoping that the other will make the first move. Yet what if we then wait forever?

Deep down we are all afraid. It is not fear that matters, but our response to it.

Day by day we form ourselves as cowards or as great warriors. It is not fear that distinguishes the two; it is action. The cowardly soul denies himself the will to act because of his fear while the courageous soul steps into the breach in the face of fear.

Verso l'alto!

O Glorious Day of the Lord's Resurrection!

A blessed Easter to you and yours!

On this glorious day, I would like to share with you two things.  First, a beautiful Easter hymn of which so few people are aware and that I know thanks to my Anglican heritage.  The hymn is called "Hail Thee Festival Day."  It is difficult to find a good version where you can hear the words and the glory and power of the organ music, but here is one of decent quality so that at least you may become familiar with it:

The second thing I would like to share with you is one last meditation from the aforementioned character:

Dawn springs at last for the empty heart, setting free those bound in slavery to themselves and their own sins chaining them in misery. Only one who has tread the paths of self-servitude can understand what it means to be gripped suddenly by the light, to be pierced to the heart with truth and to dance with joy in the new day.

In that morning, the soul leaps up to the Lord to praise Him with song and all darkness has been banished. For the Lord has called each by name and now they have heard His voice. Each soul listens in the radiant glow of freedom and knows that he belongs to the Lord, that he is a wondrous work of creation, and that the Lord thirsts for his love.

Fear may strike the heart that first hears the sweet voice of love in his heart. Those bound in sin and servitude and accustomed only to the voices that drag them deeper in their misery do not know how to respond to such love. The light of freedom seems as darkness to them and they prefer to cling to their own misery rather than step forth on a path that leads to the heavens, on a road that stretches beyond their knowledge and understanding.

Yet somehow grace is at work, converting everywhere resistant hearts bent on their own destruction. Those most opposed to the light find themselves suddenly wrapped in it, reveling in a freedom and joy they never knew existed, tasting what one day will belong to them forever.

Somehow, too, each soul becomes mystically one with the Risen Lord, receiving Him in the most holy Sacrament. Lifted high above all creation, they themselves shine with the same light.

Blessed be the Lord who rose in glory that He might draw all men to Himself!

Blessed be the Lord who lifts the darkness and sets the sinner free!

Blessed be the Lord who has called me to be His poor unworthy servant!