Suffering is one of those Christian conundrums. We tell ourselves it has meaning, we seek to offer our experience of it to our Father; yet the downward pull of desperateness that accompanies it demands the utmost resistance when we still find ourselves needing to rail against it rather than accepting it, let alone embracing it.
Have you ever felt thoroughly un-saintly in a difficult moment?
Sometimes I’ll have a shot of consolation, a minute where I feel a oneness with God’s will that lends the seeming senselessness meaning – only to turn and lose it with my children because I just can’t take on anything else beyond during my own present pain.
Then there are moments when our loved ones suffer, and there is literally nothing we can say to soothe or comfort. The spoken word is insufficient to express our inner empathy or to approach the desolation overwhelming them.
Sometimes I think God similarly chooses not to speak to us in these times, but to simply be with us.
We cannot always feel Him there – the anguish of the minute may be all our finite minds can process, but while His words fall with flatness on our aching ears, He himself – the Word – takes residence with us. Communion occurs when two interior words meet; what is spoken is merely the vehicle to reach that consummation. Which is why lovers can rest simply in each other’s presence. Which is why the Word can begin to restore us even before we validate His action with our assent.
St. Elizabeth of the Trinity treasured her friend’s words:
“Faith is the face-to-face in the darkness.”
Is our faith valiant enough to hold our hearts open to him, when we want to curl away from the shadowed pain?
Last Thanksgiving, I received a diagnosis that was almost too much to bear. It was not a life-threatening one, but the return of a condition that had broken me before. As I prayed – or more accurately, wondered – what to do in this week focused on blessings, the day’s readings turned my eyes to Psalm 116. I loved this psalm, and it had been our choice for our wedding – an exclamation of joy over our Father’s over-abundant graces. That morning, I paused though – something that had lay unnoticed before caught my eye. The psalm begins with a plea for mercy and aid, then turns to an exaltation of God’s providence. What I had never realized before was how the rejoicing begins before the resolution is given.
I love the Lord because he has heard my voice and my supplications...
I kept my faith, even when I said, 'I am greatly afflicted";
I said in my consternation, 'Men are all a vain hope.'
What shall I render to the Lord for all his bounty to me?
I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord.
I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.
O Lord, I am thy servant; I am thy servant, the son of thy handmaid.
(Psalm 116:10-16)
The peace initially comes because the Lord “hears”. He delivers my soul from death but the supplicant “kept the faith” in the midst of affliction. While the psalmist flips back and forth between his time of restoration and his time of trust amidst suffering, the motif that remains, that is affixed to the climax is, “Lord, I am thy servant…I will lift the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord” for even the death of his saints in precious in his eyes. This is the truth we must embrace, even as our nature cringes from the agony.
My friends, there is a saying that God does not give us more than we can bear. I have disagreed and challenged this truth, as many of you have likely done in hard trials. At one of these times, my brother – a priest – decided to give me the anointing of the sick. There is a line in that beautiful rite which intercedes for us to make up what is lacking in the suffering of Christ. We could respond, lacking? Nothing is lacking! – his sacrifice redeemed heaven for us.
Yet, just as he chooses to create us to be with us, so he lets suffering be a means for us to become more one with him and, ultimately, more glorified.
In practice, this hope is so quickly forgotten though. Every year, I teach a class to my high schoolers on these merits of suffering and reasons for its existence, yet none of these ring out in my heart when I feel pain; the note of comfort and the only answer to my pleadings is the same response of Sunday to end the nightmare of Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday: He, too, has suffered.
He is also the anguished servant of the Lord’s handmaiden.
Honestly, there is no satisfying answer, there is no consolation but the recognition that I am with him, as He is with me. So I will continue to call out my questions and tears – but I will also lift with him the cup of salvation.
