SUFFERING?

 Over the past several weeks I have had the opportunity to reflect on suffering, why we suffer, how we suffer and if it is reasonable to beg for suffering to stop. I have spent a good deal of time doing the latter, and then wondering if maybe instead of asking for relief I should be giving thanks, after all as Catholics we are called to embrace our crosses and join them to Christ’s Cross on Calvary. We are taught that suffering brings us closer to God, and that He is there to support us in our struggles. But then why is it that so many of us never feel more alone than when we are in the midst of our suffering?

When I was studying in university as an undergraduate I took some political theory courses. One of the philosopher’s we studied was a well known pessimist by the name of Thomas Hobbes. Now, Hobbes decided that in order to best understand human nature we should dispense with trying to understand all this spooky stuff that in his estimation we could not be certain existed, rather we should focus on what we could measure, what we could see and show evidence of. In other words, never mind this whole soul thing, and of course never mind God. So he spent his life’s work trying to explain and justify a theory of human nature and of human governance that would essentially truncate human beings and reduce them to simple creatures of appetites.

As Hobbes saw it, human existence is simply a life of trying to avoid what is unpleasant/harmful and seek out that which brings us comfort and pleasure. We wish to feel safe and content, we do not want to be worrying about others trying to relieve us of that which brings us pleasure, and so we create laws and codes of behaviour to best maintain civility and an environment that is conducive to a relatively peaceful and happy life.

In such a world suffering is truly something we must avoid at all costs, even at the cost of our lives, and without meaning suffering can send us into such despair as to see no other reprieve but death. Our current culture has very much evolved from the ideas of philosophers such as Hobbes, and later Schopenhauer who is considered the father of pessimism and his great admirer Nietzsche. None of these philosophers believed in the soul, in God. There is just here and now which can be a less than pleasant place at times. So it would stand to reason suffering could have no redeeming side to it.

As Catholics we reject this view of human nature, of life and of suffering. We believe that Christ, our God, suffered and died on the cross no for naught but for love of us! We saw in our previous Pope that suffering should not be hidden away and that is should not cause us to see ourselves as cursed or punished, but instead we should see it as a gift. It is an opportunity to grow closer to Christ and join him in his suffering for our own redemption and for the redemption of all humanity. What a gift suffering can then be seen as! Should we not then be able to find comfort and even joy in our suffering? We know that many of the saints did. In fact many of them prayed for suffering. St. Jean de Brebeuf one of the most well known of Canadian martyrs would pray each day to for suffering as Christ did on the cross, and his prayers were answered. By all accounts he endured them with a bravery and nobility that so angered his torturers that they inflicted even worse torment on him, and still he did not cry out!

So why is it that most of us work so hard to avoid suffering? Not only do I have tremendous difficulty in accepting and tolerating my suffering, the very idea of asking or praying for suffering seems, well, quite frankly crazy! I have had this conversation with a couple of my good catholic friends and we all agree that asking for suffering is indeed off our radar.

How to reconcile this? How do I give thanks and embrace something that is so repugnant to me? How do I welcome something that makes me feel like a failure as a mother and wife because I am unable to fulfil my daily obligations to my family? I was so troubled by this that I took it to our priest. When I asked him if it was wrong to ask God to take away my suffering he reminded me of Christ’s words at Gethsemane: “Father, if thou wilt, remove this chalice from me, but yet not my will but thine be done.”(Luke 22: 42) What! I gasped in disbelief as I remembered that passage and the accounts of his terrible fear, so terrible that he would sweat blood from anxiety. Christ, God made man, recoiled from suffering?

Ok so wait a minute does this mean I get a pass? Does this mean that I am not an evil, weak, cowardly soul who just wants the easy road? Maybe not, but it does mean that we are allowed to struggle with our suffering, we are allowed to even pray for relief of it, but we are called to be willing to suffer it if that is what God is willing for us. And in the end we understand all to well that suffering is a very important part of life, even at the most basic biological level it is necessary for growth and strength, and this is also true for our spiritual and mental growth. Consider giving birth, painful for both mom and babe, but necessary for the coming into the world of a new soul. Growing pains, as our bodies grow we suffer pain. The pain of struggle with an academic problem, the frustration and angst until finally the solution is arrived at. The pain experienced in rehabilitation as we recover from trauma both physical and psychological. Finally, we suffer in our spiritual awakening and growth as we realize our smallness and falleness in the light of God’s infinite Mercy and Love.

In the end as difficult as this has been it has also been a gift. A gift because I have come to appreciate my health, I have again been given an opportunity to practice humility in a need to reach out and ask for help. I have given my family an opportunity to perform true familial service as they are forced to serve she who has spent a lifetime serving them. And let us no forget the many souls I have been praying for and offering my suffering for. None of us are yet used to this challenge, and we are all struggling with all the time….but we have none of us given up, and we have all turned to God for the strength to live through a challenge that would seem almost impossible but for his Strength and company on this journey.

Dominique