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.

Feel Guilty? Do Penance.

Recently a priest I know preached on guilt, which sent me pondering that subject in light of my psychological studies.  His bringing up the widespread idea of Catholic guilt which he said he had not experienced (nor have I) reminded me of the distinction between true guilt (when one feels bad for doing something wrong) versus false guilt (feeling bad for something one has not done or simply for existing or any other irrational reason).

Now his proposed answer to guilt was simple and direct: do penance.

I have never heard it put in quite the way he expressed it: that guilt is one's conscience saying that justice has not been satisfied and therefore one ought to do penance until the guilt is gone, which means that justice has been satisfied.

Naturally that makes sense for true guilt.  If one has committed a wrong against another then doing penance to satisfy justice and make reparation for the harm done seems the best response.

What about for false guilt, however?  Often false guilt is taking on another person's guilt, so perhaps doing penance in response to false guilt might also be a way to satisfy justice.  Perhaps penance could be as satisfactory a way to remove that false guilt as unveiling the irrational beliefs that lead one to feel guilty without deserving those feelings of guilt.

I have no specific convictions here, but am merely pondering.  Here I must make one important caveat, however: this theory would hold true only so long as said penance was indeed penance and not self-punishment.  It is far too easy for one not in a healthy psychological frame of mind to undertake penance as a way to punish the self for not being good enough and consequently to view penance as making the self suffer, which is not at all the essence of penance.

What is penance then?

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says the following:

1434 The interior penance of the Christian can be expressed in many and various ways. Scripture and the Fathers insist above all on three forms, fasting, prayer, and almsgiving, which express conversion in relation to oneself, to God, and to others. Alongside the radical purification brought about by Baptism or martyrdom they cite as means of obtaining forgiveness of sins: effort at reconciliation with one's neighbor, tears of repentance, concern for the salvation of one's neighbor, the intercession of the saints, and the practice of charity "which covers a multitude of sins."

1435 Conversion is accomplished in daily life by gestures of reconciliation, concern for the poor, the exercise and defense of justice and right, by the admission of faults to one's brethren, fraternal correction, revision of life, examination of conscience, spiritual direction, acceptance of suffering, endurance of persecution for the sake of righteousness. Taking up one's cross each day and following Jesus is the surest way of penance.

Charity and the Cross.  Those are the surest signs of true penance and two expressions of the same reality: following the example of Christ.

Anything therefore could be penance.  Saint Therese could pick up a pin for love of God, which is the essence of penance.  Even eating chocolate might be a form of penance.  Now that may seem strange, but some people have so many wounds from their childhood that they cannot love themselves and sometimes in order to believe that they are worthy of receiving good things and being loved by God they need to give themselves good things, such as chocolate.

Is it not beautiful how many opportunities we have to show God that we love Him—which is in the end what penance truly is?  There is nothing except sin that we cannot make a penance—an act of love for God who has loved us first.  That love then will cover a multitude of sins.

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."

A Mother's Heart is a Gethsemane

 Not one of the apostles could stay awake to keep watch with Christ as He suffered His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, but I cannot help but believe there was one who kept watch with Him even though she was not in the Garden with Him.  Perhaps some of the mystics wrote about His Mother keeping watch in prayer with Him that night wherever she happened to be.  How could such a Mother, united so closely to her Son, not know in her heart and soul of His agony?

A mother suffers when her children suffer.  Perhaps in a way she even suffers more than they suffer, for she can see more clearly than they where their paths lead and the pain they will bring upon themselves.  She wants to spare them all the suffering that she can—even to wishing she could take on their pain for them.

"Father, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless not My will but Thine be done."

So Christ prayed in Gethsemane.  How powerless He must have felt as He knelt and prayed, faced with the anguish of knowing the suffering He would undergo.  Likewise how powerless a mother feels as she prays to the Father that He might take away her cup, which is to spare her children their suffering.

It is easy to focus on Christ's agony as His fear and terror of the cruel torture He would experience in being scourged, crowned with thorns, mocked, condemned to death, and crucified.  Yet what is such physical suffering in comparison to the pain of His heart?

He chose to suffer out of love.  Consider for a moment what that means: He suffered such a cruel death not merely to fulfill the demands of justice and allow us to enter heaven, but because He loves us and desires us to be in intimate relationship with Him.  One who loves infinitely must suffer infinitely.

He loves you and wants you close to His heart.  You.  Not the you that you would like to be, but you as you are.  You have a special place in His heart that He gives to none other.

So many turn away from such love.  Who can bear it?

Think of the pain you have ever felt when someone rejected your love.  His pain in Gethsemane—the cup He asked His Father to take away—must have been bitter with unrequited love. He longed so much for all to love Him and yet knew how many would reject Him. He must have felt as He knelt there that His sacrifice was in vain—that it was not enough for Him to suffer such pain out of love, for it would not be enough to win the hearts of all to love Him.  The devil must have tempted Him with the folly of His sacrifice, urging Him to give it up as fruitless because He would give all that He had and it would not be enough.

A mother's heart serves as a similar battleground.  A mother gives everything she has and it is not enough.  How much she must be tempted to think that it is all in vain and to feel the agony of her own powerlessness in the face of what she desires with all her heart and soul.  Truly she is united in that pain with Christ in Gethsemane.

Gethsemane

I discovered this beautiful song a short time ago.  It is meant for children, but it is nice to have something in a range I can sing.  Also, our Lord told us that we must become like little children if we want to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

Despite trying to become like that little child looking up to my Father to provide all that I need, I am finding the quarantine begin to wear on me, as I expect you are also.  Today I am thinking especially of all those struggling with it, of all those dealing with heartache, of all those who are lonely, and of all those feeling hopeless.  I am thinking also of Christ in Gethsemane, aching for consolation, crying out to the Father and yet remaining so alone in His agony.

Music is helping keep my eyes turned toward Him, so this song is as much my prayer as my song.  It is my prayer for you in whatever you need right now:

Gethsemane

Father, let this suffering pass from us; nevertheless, not my will, but Thine be done.

Lord, I Am Not Worthy

O Jesus, I cannot receive Thee today in Holy Communion; come nevertheless I beg Thee spiritually into my heart, to purify it, to sanctify it, and to render it like unto Thine own.  O Lord I am not worthy that Thou shouldst enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.  Amen.

That is a slightly-modified version of the act of Spiritual Communion that I found somewhere ages ago and memorized.  As I have been praying it these days, there has been one phrase in particular that stands out to me:

"O Lord, I am not worthy."

Most of the time we blithely spout those words during Mass right after the priest elevates the Host, saying: "Behold the Lamb of God, behold Him who takes away the sins of the world."

How long do we take to truly ponder them?  Not long I daresay, for we scarcely have a few moments before we are lining up to go and receive the Lamb of God Himself.

I can tell you that these days and weeks of not being able to receive Holy Communion are certainly making me think about those words more than I ever had before.  It is one thing to say that we are not worthy and then to go on and do the very thing we said we were unworthy of; it is quite another to say those very same words knowing that we cannot right now do that about which we proclaim our unworthiness.

That very unworthiness, however, is the condition for receiving His mercy.  If we deserved it, as my spiritual director highlighted in a story about a woman going to Napoleon and begging mercy for her son, it would not be mercy.  That indeed is a fitting reflection for this Divine Mercy Sunday.

For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world!

To a Soul Steeped in Shame

Dear Soul,

Is there some weight upon you?  Are you ashamed of something from your past that keeps resurfacing to drag you down into the depths of hopelessness?  Or perhaps something about who you are causes you shame?

Shame is a heavy burden to carry.  You are not meant to carry it.

Think of the woman condemned for adultery.  Jesus bent down and wrote in the dust—tradition says He wrote the sins of those who wished to stone her—and told her accusers that the one without sin should cast the first stone.  Each knew the burden of his own sin and departed, leaving her alone with Jesus.  He rose and looked at her with love, saying to her: "Neither do I condemn you." (John 8:11)

Jesus says the same thing to you today.

Saint Paul reiterates that point in his letter to the Romans: "There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:1)

Who is it then who condemns you?

Another name for Satan is the accuser.  What your enemy wants is that you focus on yourself and your sin rather than looking to Christ and His mercy.  Every sin is the same old story: it begins with temptation, a draw toward the pleasure and immediate gratification, but as soon as you have given in, the devil turns on you, asking how you could possibly have been so stupid as to fall into that sin.  Frankly, he hates you and wants your destruction.  It is so easy to believe those lies of condemnation.

Think of the story of the man who had been lying near the pool of Bethsaida.  For thirty-eight years he had lain there, paralyzed, hoping someone would carry him to the pool when it was stirred up that he might be healed.

When Jesus comes to the man, He asks: "Do you want to be healed?"

Why does He ask that?  It seems obvious that a paralytic man lying near a pool of healing wants to be healed.  He has spent thirty-eight years of his life lying there hoping for that very thing.

Or has he?

It is easy to want healing, but not be willing to pay the price.  That paralytic said he had no one to carry him down to the water.  Could he have asked a complete stranger?  Was it only his pride that kept him from receiving what he needed?  Scripture does not tell us, but the question of Jesus makes me wonder.

All the paralytic does in response to that question is to make excuses.  Yet Jesus merely tells him to pick up his mat and walk. (John 5)

Similarly, He tells us: "Deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Me." (Luke 9:23)

Sometimes—more often than not I would say—that cross is ourselves with our sins and flaws and imperfections.  We desire so much to be good—to be perfect.  We want to make ourselves holy, as if we could achieve heaven by our own effort.

Stated in such explicit fashion that idea is clearly folly.  Yet it hides within us beneath layers of lies woven by our clever enemy, especially the lie that says our mistakes have ruined the plan God had for us.

Do you truly believe you are that powerful?  Could you, a mere mortal, possibly interfere with the plan of an all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful God who is Being Itself?

I sincerely doubt it.

If you have ever believed that your life is ruined because of any action or sin of yours, you may have fallen for that subtle lie of believing in a weak and powerless god who is certainly not the God who came down from heaven and died on the Cross to set you free.  When you choose to believe in His sacrifice for you—when you accept Him as your Savior—that truth will set you free. (John 8:32)

Often something stops us from truly believing and accepting that truth, however.  Often that obstacle is our own pride, disguised perhaps from our own eyes.

For many years, my idea of holiness was of being perfect.  Reading about saints who were perfect from a young age (at least according to their biographers, for they would never have described themselves thus) further cemented an idea forged in my own inner vicious cycle of believing that I had to be perfect to be loved.  In terms of relationship with God that would mean that my relationship with Him would depend upon what I did--i.e. what I call NeoPelagianism, or the idea that I could earn my way to heaven without grace.  Clearly untrue.

My intellect absolutely knows its falsity.  To convince my heart of that fact, however, is an entirely different matter.  Is it the same for you?

Consider the following phrase: "There is nothing you can do that will ever make God love you any less or any more."

Do you believe that?

It is true in a more profound way than you will ever know in this life.  It speaks to the mystery of God's overwhelming love for you.  Yes, His love for you, not merely for the you-that-does-the-good-things or the you-that-you-wish-you-were or even the you-that-you-will-be-someday-if-you-can-ever-get-your-life-together.  He loves you just as you are.

He loves your brokenness even.  Can you love it?

Whatever you have done, whatever you regret, He has allowed.

Think about that for a moment.

It can be a hard truth to accept.  It is far easier to embrace the active part of God's will: the part that wills good things and works miracles and brings healing.  It is far harder to embrace the passive part of His will: the part that allowed the Crucifixion and that permits all the sin and suffering in the world and in your own life.

Believing in the Crucifixion necessitates believing in the Resurrection.  So too does belief in the sin and suffering in your life demand belief in Divine Providence.

God allowed the Crucifixion to conquer sin and death that we might share in His divinity and one day see Him face to face in the glory of Heaven.  Saint Paul says that "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him." (1 Corinthians 2:9)  The greatest evil possible—that men should kill God—leads to an unimaginable good.

If He can do that, He can surely bring great goods out of your situation, whatever it may be, beyond your imagination.  Trust means choosing to believe that truth.

Surrender to God and accepting His will often requires us most to embrace our own selves with all of our flaws and mistakes and sins.  Can these separate us from the love of God?  Only if they lead us to pride and self-sufficiency—to a rejection of God.  If they lead us instead to repentance and we cry out for God's mercy, we become more able to love.

Do you remember what Christ said about the woman who anointed His feet and wept over them and whom the Pharisees condemned?  He said that she loved much because she had been forgiven much and that if she had been forgiven less--—i.e. if she had sinned less—she would have loved less.

Have you ever considered that your sins might be the price for being able to love?

"O happy fault!  O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!" we pray in the Exultet at the Easter Vigil Liturgy.  Those words speak of the fruit that came from God's response to original sin: Christ becoming Man to be our Savior.

What if each of us could take those words to heart after we have been reconciled to the Lord?  "O happy fault that has led me to the foot of the Cross!  O necessary sin that has purified my heart of self-love, washed away my pride, and opened my heart to the mercy of so great a Redeemer whose love is poured out into my heart?"

I pray that you are able to believe these words.  I pray that they can be the foundation of a new understanding of who you are in the sight of the Lord.

This truth shall indeed set you free.  Then the path that you are on will bear fruit, for your vocation is love.  And what is love except what Christ has shown us in letting Himself be nailed to the Cross and giving Himself breath by breath to bring us to life?

Whatever path you have left behind no longer matters.  Your loving Father calls you to respond to the new and changing reality before you.  His love meets you not on the roads you have not taken, but on the one you walk.  It is there He is doing something new.  The Lord says to you now, as He said through the prophet Isaiah:

"Remember not former things, and look not on things of old. Behold I do new things, and now they shall spring forth, verily you shall know them: I will make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. The beast of the field shall glorify me, the dragons and the ostriches: because I have given waters in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, to my chosen." (Isaiah 43:18-20)

You are His chosen one.  Out of all the pain—out of all the darkness—He shall bring you to life again.

Be not afraid!

You have His promise:

"Behold I am with you all days,
even to the consummation of the world."

(Matthew 28:20) 

and

"Behold I make all things new." 

(Revelation 21:5)

Our Lady too is with you on your journey.  As you give to the Lord your fiat, receiving Him in His miraculous fullness given to you in every moment, she is interceding for you, obtaining for you all the grace that you need to hope in the Lord and in His promises.

Love and prayers,

+Jac