The "Sheer Suffering" of Therese

October begins with Saint Therese, who died of tuberculosis on September 30, 1897. She was only 24 years old. In her final days, several of her sisters recorded her words.

She once said, "Take heart, Jesus hears even the last echo of our pain."

Mental Illness: The Intimate Reality of Human Affliction

The Almost-Invisible Man?

I mentioned "depression" in a recent post. I'm glad that I did, because it's always good to talk about depression... especially when I'm depressed. It's not really so bad right now. I've been much, much worse before.

There may actually be some fairly new readers of this blog who don't know that I'm disabled. I'm not happy about this, and I prefer to say that I'm "retired" (even better, emeritus, as I have been designated though I'm only 52 years old). I try to be as "able" as possible. If anything, I push myself too hard to do certain things (while, of course, rationalizing my laziness about not doing other things -- because disabled people don't stop being human beings and therefore sinners).

But the basic point remains. A long-misdiagnosed and untreated infection is now in remission but has left permanent physical damage (which is there in spite of the fact that I may "look great" when you see me now). I talk about this in a bit more detail in my book, which has been around now for five years (that time went by fast). The book is still selling because the great subjects of struggling with human illness and human suffering never go out of date. (The most noticeable difference is in my personal stories, above all the fact that the kids are older now. If you read this blog, of course, you know that.)

The greatest challenge, however, has been my lifelong struggle with mental illness. It was more difficult to write about this in my book, but in the end I decided that I really had to bring this out in the open. I knew too much about how hard this is to deal with, how much it remains an ongoing battle, and how poorly understood it is.

Depression. What kind of a name is that for a serious disease? Sometimes I wish it had been discovered by two German scientists with unpronounceable names. Then it might have been called something like Kruezenheimer-Schlotmichenmachers Disease. People would say, "Oh wow. That sounds serious." Instead "depression" sounds like you need air in your tires. People say, "Oh, get outside. Cheer up! Smile." Which is fine, but it's not even the beginning of treatment for the very real disease of "depression."

Ok... best gameface today! ? Maybe...

In fact, you can be outside climbing mountains, and acting cheerfully, and smiling all the time, and still be suffering from major depression. Yes you can.

I have a saying: Mental illness happens to "normal" people. There are people who look "fine on the outside" who have problems you can't begin to imagine. We try to classify this constellation of afflictions: I have Depression and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. Because of the episodic and varying nature of symptoms, I'm on what could be called the "bi-polar spectrum."

I know that there is a lot of baloney that passes for psychology and psychiatric medicine. There is also a lot of truth. I have tried in the past (see my book) and I continue to try to articulate and communicate in a comprehensible way something of my own experience of suffering from the real things. But I don't think I can ever really communicate how horrible it is, how relentlessly awful.

I'm very hopeful, however, that the worst of all that horror is behind me. That's why I try to articulate it: I need to speak for the sake of the multitudes of people -- people you know and love -- who are in the middle of it right now. They can't speak, and though I can't really speak for them, I do want to invite others to share in the compassion that I have for them, that I have learned from my own pain.

This is something I am able to do.

Click HERE for my book

It has been a long ride for me. I have been blessed with good doctors and therapists. I know how difficult it can be to find the right medication (or combination of medications) that help stabilize the most essential features of functional living, without intolerable "side-effects." It's hard, but it's important because we must attend to the distinctively physical, neurobiological aspect of these illnesses.

Different treatments and regimens work for different people. Maximizing brain health is a necessary part of treating mental illness, but it is not sufficient. There is no "magic pill" that takes it all away, although we ought not to underestimate the remarkable improvement that medication can provide for many people, that can aid the coping and healing process.

Really, mental illness is teaching us something about the intimate reality of the affliction of the human person. Because it is "close" to the distinctively personal sphere of human life, mental illness is making us more aware of the need to treat the whole person.

The subject of any kind of sickness, pain, or suffering in human life is always a person. Through my own life I am learning how important it is to remember this, both for myself and for others.

The Solitude of Our Tears

"The Lord Jesus... took upon Himself
the burden of all our mortal anguish.
His face is reflected in that of every person
who is humiliated and offended,
sick and suffering,
alone, abandoned, and despised.
Pouring out His blood,
He has rescued us from the slavery of death,
He has broken the solitude of our tears,
He has entered into our every grief
and our every anxiety."

~Benedict XVI

Nothing is Ever Enough

This human life: full of joy and adventure and promise; full of so many reasons to be grateful.

But nothing is ever enough.

All the promises and all of the beauty eventually fall short; they pass with time even as we endure, unfulfilled. They open our hearts, but if we try to hold on, we are left with only the wounds of dissatisfaction.

Sometimes life itself just seems to betray us, and our hopes are frustrated by external afflictions. Or we might have years of vigor to pursue a satisfying life, but eventually our spirits grow weary of the continual disappointment.

We might become tired, cynical, or bitter as we get older. Or we might shrink our hearts and cover our secret despair with the mask of resignation. Eventually, we realize that all we have to look forward to is death.

If it all seems unbearable, that's because it is unbearable.

The only hope we have is to call upon the Lord. We must really call upon Him, with faith. Too often when we approach prayer, what we're really looking for is an escape from our suffering. But harsh realities cannot be dismissed by "religious talk." Theology is not enough. Superficial pious sentiments are not enough.

The brokenness and frustration remain. The wounds remain and grow worse. It is here -- where we really hurt, where we really experience our infirmity, our need -- that we must turn to the Lord and call upon Him.

There is nowhere else to go, nowhere else to bring these burdens, this life, this cry of the heart. But the miracle of grace always awaits us.

Jesus on the Cross.

Jesus is the God who has already come to be with us, and who waits for us in our sufferings.

Only Jesus can carry this kind of pain, this pain that challenges my identity, that reaches all the way to me as a person. This is human suffering, and only He knows it all the way through. He is the True Man, who has united Himself to every human being. He is also the True God, the only begotten Son of the Father, who alone knows the depths of every person because He is the Source who whispers each person into being, and the Way, the Truth, the Life who calls each one to their destiny.

Our only hope is to abandon everything to Him. "Jesus, I give myself to You. Take care of everything." Again and again, whatever, and wherever, without hesitation, without fear... "Jesus I abandon everything to You."

He has made our sufferings His own on the Cross, joining them to His victory, which is the revelation, the giving, the pouring out of God's love.

This Love is the secret of all the beauty and goodness and all the promises and aspirations that awaken our hearts, only to increase our thirst. But Love has come into the world to be with us, so that we will never give up, so that we will persevere, holding on to Him, recognizing that everything belongs to Him.

This is the hope that changes and transforms life, that saves us. Where else can any of us go? We have to go to Him, and give ourselves to Him.

We have to trust in Him.

Rescue My Soul

"Have mercy on me, Lord, I have no strength;
Lord, heal me, my body is racked;
my soul is racked with pain.
But You, O Lord, how long?
Return, Lord, rescue my soul.
Save me in Your merciful love" (Psalm 6:2-4).

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior,

have mercy on me, a sinner.

Something REALLY Happens

We are called by God to a new birth. The struggle of this life is the mysterious and dramatic transformation by which mortal, broken human beings become children of God in Jesus Christ.

But there is so much that I cannot see yet, that I don't understand. So much struggle that seems futile, because I'm so small. I'm like the dying seed in the earth. I can't imagine the fruit that will emerge from my being broken open and emptied. The truth of life is this passing through death to resurrection, and even when we follow this passage with trust in Jesus, the whole "death" thing is still dark.

God lifts us up to His Kingdom, where "glory" is the radiance of Infinite Love. It sounds great on paper, but suffering reminds me that this transformation is something that happens to me. I am afraid, I feel powerless, I need to be carried. God is a consuming Fire -- and I believe that this fire is love and mercy, but I need a tenderness, a gentle presence, a great inspiration, an implacable dedication, and a unique sympathy for me, as a person, so that I can give myself and let myself be carried by God's fire.

From the depths of His own heart pouring out His love on the cross, Jesus entrusts each of us to His mother. "When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple whom He loved standing beside her, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son.’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home" (John 19:26-27). Every word Jesus speaks from the cross is relevant to the whole mystery of our salvation. If Jesus really matters for every single person, then we must recognize that the gift of His love encompasses every person being entrusted to this woman.

Mary is my mother. Even when I forget, she doesn't forget. She remains at the cross till the end, and so she remains with me. She has always a mother's heart for me, for you, for everyone. Through her we learn to be children. Through her we learn to let go of all the fear.

Mary, help me in the dark. Be with me at the hour of my death, and through all the moments of my dying. Remind me that I am loved. Remind me that I am small and that you are carrying me, with a tenderness that won't let go.

When I am Drowning, Lord, Save Me!

Today's gospel always strikes me. It's such a parable of our relationship with God. How frail we are, and how easy it is to forget, to falter, to lose confidence in God.

"O you of little faith," Jesus says, "why did you doubt?"

The compassion of God wants us to understand that there is never any real reason to give up on Him. There is never any circumstance in which He does not accompany us and draw us to hope in Him and abandon ourselves to Him.

Still, how easily we are overwhelmed by difficulties, and they are not only the great pains but also the ordinary frustrations we face every day. Even though we have seen His miracles of love, we must learn confidence again and again as we walk on the waters of life.

I can say many things about the meaning of suffering and about the fact that God knows all things and directs everything to the good, and yet, when it comes to my own trials I seem to lose sight of it all and start to flounder. My sufferings seem to be nothing else but humiliation; I feel like I am being crushed, or suffocated. And what is it after all—petty things! The voice of discouragement begins to creep in.

There is always the danger of discouragement. But God’s mercy is stronger, and I cry out to Him.

I am learning to trust Him because I have seen that He does not leave me alone. It is like that moment in Peter’s life when, after beginning to walk on the water, he panics and starts to sink. Jesus reaches out and grabs him.

When I am drowning, this is the one thing and the essential thing: let Him grab me.

Can There be Joy, Even in Pain and Tribulations?

"Joy is like the seal of a Christian. Even in pain, tribulations, even in persecutions" (Pope Francis).

I don't think we can stress this too much, as long as we know what we're really saying. Joy is not the same thing as "always seeing the bright side," or always maintaining a constant smile or a good mood or good feelings. It's not merely a good disposition or an energetic manner.

External cheerfulness and a peaceful, confident, positive internal feeling or state of mind are not the same things as Christian joy. Indeed, joy often coexists with all sorts of apparently contrary dispositions of a complicated human personality, ranging from bad digestion to intense physical or psychological suffering. "Even in pain, tribulations, even in persecutions" the Christian person possesses joy.

The obvious appearances and feelings of joy may be signs and expressions of real joy, or some of its elements. But in and of themselves, they may indicate nothing more than natural realities such as a certain personality type, a cultural expression, a physical and psychological equilibrium, or a response to a satisfying experience. They can even be a fake dress worn by hypocrisy, or a facade that hides an agenda of violence, abuse, and personal manipulation.

Real joy, however, is deep and foundational. It is an underlying reality of the new humanity that we receive from Christ, through the gift of the Holy Spirit. The heart of Christian joy is a participation, already begun here and now in the life of grace, in the very mystery of God's own infinite joy, of His life, of His glory. No experience in this life can simply be objectified, analysed, and classified as "joy-in-the-radical-sense," because it is God sharing His joy with us -- the joy that is God Himself.

God elevates and purifies our affections, draws us through them, and gives us much help that passes through our psychic experiences and strengthens us. But even when we cannot "feel Him" in any way, we still believe in Him by faith and cling to Him in hope. We know that the source of our joy is with us, and that if we love Him, then we possess that invincible joy even if the world rages at us, even if sorrow overcomes us in the face of earthly loss, even if neurotransmitters in the brain or hormones in the body go bonkers, even if incomprehensible pain fills our entire conscious awareness.

It is for our encouragement (not our discouragement) that the grace of the Spirit touched some of the martyrs and saints, so that they embraced gruesome death "as if going to a wedding feast." But God's Kingdom is overwhelmingly made up of saints who probably went through their deaths with considerably less enthusiasm. Many lived their lives with temperaments that would not be classified as "joyful" in the mundane sense.

The joy of God is lived within the love of God, and it realizes itself vitally within our personality in the measure in which we love God and our neighbor. The resonance within experience and the external signs of joy have different forms, different levels of intensity, and variations that correspond to the secret ways in which the grace of God is at work transforming mysteriously the particular person according to his or her own history, wounds, and suffering.

If we are patient and loving with people, we will be surprised by their joy as it peeks through like the sun on a cloudy day. And a glimpse of it will enrich us.

In sum, smiles and good feelings may arise from true joy, but the joy that is the gift of the Spirit is always deeper and "beyond" any of these expressions. If life becomes more happy and "fun" in general for those who love God (and it does), it is because God's presence brings healing to the whole person... but in different ways and in different measure, always mysteriously and personally, not always obvious and evident.

After the resurrection, Jesus didn't ask Peter: "Simon son of John, do you feel good about me...."

He asked, "Simon son of John, do you love me...."

It is in God that we have joy, and nothing can separate us from this radical joy: neither principalities and powers, nor the present or the future, nor the kings of the earth and their designs, nor persecutions, tribulations, pains, nor the tragedies of life, the loss of loved ones, the oppression of harsh task masters, nor sufferings, nor piercing screams from some horrendous cancer treatment (whether it is us who scream, or the person we love most in the world as we stand by their bed), nor the harrowing abysses of psychiatric disorders, the darkness and deadness of depression, the anxiety and obsessions that rage like fire in our brains, nor the implacable daily unseen torture of a chronic illness that no one else seems to understand, nor any of the countless ups or downs of life -- extraordinary or ordinary -- that we can imagine.

When we hear the words of Pope Francis, we shouldn't say, "Oh, I don't feel joyful, so I guess I'm not a real Christian." Rather let us say, "No matter how I feel, my joy is in Christ and in belonging to Him."

When we say this, let us examine ourselves, and seek forgiveness for all our sins (which never bring true joy in themselves, although our sorrow over them is already the beginning of joy). And let us live in hope, because the life of God is our joy, and His love is stronger than our suffering, our wounds, our frailty.

We have confident joy because He has reached down to our deepest need. God has joined Himself to us in the most desolate places of our pain and tribulation. Jesus is with us, and our wounds belong to Him; they are His wounds, forever. Joy is the revolution of transfigured open wounds, open forever in His resurrected body, because of His love which He gives to us.

The joy of this love becomes mysteriously radiant even within all the moments of this present life -- this often arduous journey -- because love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things (1 Corinthians 13:7). In His love we keep going, we hope, we desire, we offer, we trust, we cry out for God, we never give up.

The Path of Little Cuts

John Janaro around the year 1992

I meant to post this a couple of days earlier, to correspond with its original date, but I haven't exactly been on the ball lately. Nevertheless, it turns out to be a happy delay. This little anecdote has some echoes of the theme of personal suffering as articulated by Msgr. Albacete in yesterday's post.

The young man who wrote these words in May of 1992 was still riding on the cloud of his recent success in the public presentation and defense of his complex theological thesis. He was full of the praise of the examining professors and the audience, and perhaps had begun to puff up with the feeling that he really was as "brilliant" as they seemed to think.

One may or may not be brilliant, but it is not helpful to allow one's self to become preoccupied with any kind of overconfidence, since it obscures the real smallness and fragility and radical neediness that constitutes our human condition, even the condition of someone who is a genius.

I've since learned that whatever brilliance I may have had was easily paralyzed by debilitating disease, and easily turned into a weapon against itself by neurological dysfunctions of the brain. The human person is fragile indeed, but also -- by the force of the implacable aspiration of a living vocation and the strength of Divine grace -- tenacious and adaptable, capable of refocusing and moving forward.

One learns, slowly, that self-satisfaction and pride choke off the true growth of the person, and that what is needed is a realistic assessment of one's capacities and a giving-over of everything to the wisdom and goodness of God, to follow the way that He leads.

As I said, one learns slowly -- for the most part. This lesson is a journey of trust, realism, and self-surrender.

I am still on that journey, 22 years after I wrote these words. I still have a scar on my finger from the injury I describe below. It was a small suffering, but it reminded me that I was on the road to transcendence, a long and arduous road.

Young John Janaro, May 14, 1992:

How Can We Have True Compassion For Those Who Suffer?

William Congden, Crucifixion series

I'm not going to offer my own reflections on such a profound problem. Instead, I have a few striking selections (with notes from me, occasionally, in brackets [ ] ) from a book that is rich in what it offers to both the mind and the heart, by the great and unheralded theologian (and my old friend) Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete. The little book is called God at the Ritz (click the link and buy a copy). The title is both serious and funny, but I'm not going to explain that here. You'll have to get the book to find out.

These thoughts (selected from pp. 81-116) are worth going through, because I think Msgr. Albacete presents an understanding of compassion as "co-suffering" that is essential to how we can really help one another and stand together with one another in solidarity in suffering. This ingredient of "co-suffering," I think, is proper to every gesture of compassion including those that bring relief to the suffering of others.

It's something I want to ponder and develop further, personally as a human being and perhaps also philosophically/theologically. Note that the "audience" for these remarks is not just Christians but all people who search for meaning, who suffer and practice love and compassion:

What is human suffering? Suffering is not the same as pain. Pain is a symptom indicating that something is wrong at one or more of the three levels of human awareness: physical, psychological, and spiritual. [Note: there is an interesting discussion of this point, but the theme is that what distinguishes the core of specifically human suffering is the way it touches a person's identity, the way it introduces a rupture of the person's expectation of the "good-for-myself," or even the presumption of its realization. This rupture, experienced as "against-me," provokes—in the intrinsic reality of human personal suffering—a fundamental and vital question.] 

Suffering occurs when you seek to understand the reason for pain—not the cause of it, but the reason for it—the "ultimate reason" if you will, for "why this should happen." We ask "why?" because suffering breaks our mental schema of how things should be. Suffering tears apart our worldview, our assumptions about life. We ask why in the face of inexplicable imperfection. Asking why drives us beyond our preconceived notions toward something more.

Often, without realizing it, we address our "why" to the Source of meaning. We look for a face that is ultimately responsible for everything. In essence, then, we aren't looking for explanations. We are looking for something else: we are looking for salvation, for redemption. When we suffer, asking "why" moves us toward transcendence.

[This question (why?) is in some way the distinctive form of the experience of human suffering. The question] surges out of the human heart and breaks through all attempts to suppress it. [And, it] opens us to others who are also suffering, thus creating a solidarity among those who suffer. To suffer together means to walk together toward transcendence.

This solidarity is the proper human response to [the] suffering [of others]. This doesn't mean that we "share the pain" of those who suffer. While this phrase is used quite often, I don't think this is possible. Nothing is more intimately personal than the pain of suffering. It is, after all, a wound in our personal identity, and personal identity cannot be shared. Each person is unique and unrepeatable. What we share is the questioning, and thus we suffer with the one who suffers. We "co-suffer" with that person.

The only adequate response when confronted with another person's suffering is co-suffering. It is the only way to respect the suffering of another. Co-suffering affirms the wounded personal identity of the sufferer through our willingness to expose our identity to the questioning provoked by the sufferer's pain. This willingness to share suffering is an act of love. Co-suffering is the way we love the one who suffers.

In our relationship with the one who suffers, we as co-sufferers can impose nothing on the other person. We can only help the other to ask the question "why" by asking it together—that is, by praying together. Praying together with the one who suffers is the just response to the suffering.

The redemption of suffering, as our experience indicates, cannot be found as an "ultimate answer" to a problem: it can only be an event that transforms the drama of suffering into a drama of love and shows love to be more powerful than its denial. The possibility of this event sustains a realistic hope and an unfailing determination to protect and defend human freedom and the dignity of human life.

All That Lies at Hand

O God, O Jesus, O vivifying Spirit:

Without You I can do nothing.
Without You,
every moment is a crushing burden;
every trial pricks and stings my tired flesh.

Without You,
I do nothing;
I am nothing;
I am a huge, hollow hole of nothing.

O Lord my God;
O Jesus, Redeemer and Healer;
O Holy Spirit—Lord and Giver of Life:

With You
I can do all
that lies at hand

in the small space of today.

With You,
I can endure whatever weight
You ask me to bear in this moment,

trusting in Your wisdom and love.

--adapted from a passage in my book about the challenges of living with chronic debilitating illness: Never Give Up: My Life and God's Mercy (Published by Servant/Franciscan Media).

An Unequaled Suffering

Rouault, The Passion

"Offering himself freely in his passion and death on the cross, the Son of God took upon himself all the evil of sin. The suffering of the Crucified God is not just one form of suffering alongside others, not just another more or less painful ordeal; it is an unequaled suffering. In sacrificing himself for us all, Christ gave a new meaning to suffering, opening up a new dimension, a new order: the order of love."

Blessed John Paul II, Memory and Identity

Georges Rouault (1871-1958), Crowned with Thorns

Georges Rouault (1871-1958), Christ on the Cross

I Was Just Teasing. Please Don't Be Offended.

I'm always teasing. It's my disposition, and sometimes my effort to show love. Sometimes it's just a bad habit. It's just sloth: fear of the seriousness of life.

Often when people are expressing their frustrations with the ordinary problems of the day (either in conversation or in a post online) it seems natural for me to find something of the humor that runs like a current through all these things. So I tease a little; I try, perhaps, to "make light" because I see some lightness that's really there.

I also know that there is always the temptation to be flippant or dismissive or cynical. There is the temptation to twist humor into a way of evading or denying the impact of another person's suffering on myself. This temptation is strongest with people I know the best, with those who are -- in the most immediate sense of the term -- my "neighbors," my brothers and sisters.

I'm so sorry for all the times I've done this to my loved ones: to Eileen first (who is always quick to tell me to cut it out, thank God) and to my children. I'm sorry when I let amusement (or analysis) become a pretext for a lack of attention. I'm sorry. My dear loved ones, Eileen, my children (especially my quiet daughters), sometimes you may feel put off, but don't be... I love you all so much.

I'm sorry, my friends. I know that the burdens of the day are real. A moment of suffering is beyond measuring, and worthy of offering with Jesus. Precisely that one moment holds a mystery of suffering that encompasses your personal pain and your own cry for God. I always want to respect you, and live in compassion, to join with you in the loneliness of pain.

Humor would seem rather awkward here, but that is because I am awkward. I want to be compassionate, but I am powerless to help you by my own power. I can't reach you, because suffering (in itself) is incommunicable. How easy it is for words to bend in the direction of a dark cynicism or even a veiled rejection. Sometimes even mutual laughter is just noise to distract us from the silence of a resignation to the cheapening of life, or even to despair.

I'm sorry, my friends. I am a fallen human being. I am afraid of suffering. It is so easy to forget, in the moment, and to see nothing but the limitations of everything.

Only in Jesus can we share our sufferings. Jesus bridges all the distances and overcomes the limits of all things. He rises from the dead. I must remember Him and dwell with Him more deeply in my heart. There I shall find the strength for compassion and the healing salve of good humor.

I'm sorry to you also, my friends on the Internet. Especially in a combox, it's so easy to crack a joke that comes off the wrong way because you can't see my face. Winking and smiling emoticons are a poor substitute for a human face that wants to say, "We are together in Jesus. I don't know how to help, but we are together. Your suffering is my suffering, in Him. I joke because I feel awkward, because it's beyond my understanding, but also perhaps because the Risen Jesus already hold all of us and He doesn't want us to be gloomy."

I tease all the time, and it comes naturally. Life can seem melancholy but there's a line of humor through it all that remains like a glimmer of the irrepressible glory of creation, and the surprising miracle of redemption and the undying hope that comes from it.

I see in humor a reflection of God's mercy, and the utter gratuity of everything. Existence is a gift, and we will never be its masters. But the recognition of this restores innocence and awakens joy, and I just want to rejoice in the irony and the beauty of how we all exist, and we are all together, and we are each so peculiar, so ...unique.

And how we are, each and all of us, so dear to God.

Nothing is Wasted

When I am suffering some kind of small and ridiculous problem, what can I do? I can offer it to God, and offer myself to God.

What matters is that, here and now, it is "I" who am afflicted; the circumstances of this situation are calling on me to make a sacrifice, to recognize the mystery of my own life and to say, "Lord, this belongs to you, this moment belongs to you, 'I' belong to you."

The world is a communion of sacrifice. How little we understand of what God can build out of the circumstances we consider worthless. Love does not have to feel sweet. Anyone who has changed a poopy diaper knows that. The power of sacrifice is beyond our measure. Offer everything. When I offer, there is--however faintly it may seem--the recognition that "I," my circumstances, the whole world, belongs to Someone Else, to Christ--the Christ who suffered and triumphed and inaugurated the New Creation. It is His. I am His. Nothing is wasted, thrown away, lost, stupid, meaningless.

Real life is the affirmation of this through sacrifice, through letting go of my idea, through the constant abandonment of my limited perspective, my measure, my attachment to my own expectations, including especially my expectations about myself. I am frustrated with myself. Offer the frustration. Do not cease to love, to aspire, to cherish ideals, to struggle, to do good, but remember that it all belongs to Him and that He shapes everything according to a plan that He knows is right for me.

February 3, 2011

Working a Wonder

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Our relationship with God is mysterious, and our sufferings are a profound part of this mystery. We are called to share in the infinite life and love of God; we flesh and blood human beings, who have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning even on a good day.

We are called by God to a relationship that is destined to transform us into His likeness, to “divinize” us. This is going to take some stretching, to say the least. And on top of the simple fragility of being a human being, we all have the effects of original sin and our own personal sins with which we must contend.

This is why we suffer. But Jesus has suffered for all of us, and suffers in all of us. He is the reason why redemption and glory are destined to rise up out of our own suffering, if we adhere to Him in faith, hope, and love. The grace of His Spirit reaches us especially in our weakness.

I only see the surface of my life. Deep down, God is working a wonder, and the means He is using penetrate my whole life with its joys and sorrows, and all that is yet unknown. What God wants for me is so much more, so much greater, so much more glorious and joyful, than what I think I want for myself.

Why am I afraid that I can’t trust Him?  Could I have really given myself a better life than the actual life that God has given me?  And can I construct a better future for myself than what God has planned for me? Should I not trust Him?

In eternity, we shall see all and rejoice in all. Here, we see through that dark glass called faith. Sometimes it is very dark, but we must trust God to give us what we need to sustain hope, and to grow in the capacity to respond to His mysterious Love with our own self-abandoning love.

There Are No Shortcuts

I have nothing to say. I have been staring at a blank screen for over an hour. Staring. Really.

Lots of ideas have gone through my mind. The Amerisphere is full of ideas, because we have all been provoked in recent days. Why do these mass killings keep happening? People argue about gun laws. People argue about whether or not these shooters are "mentally ill." People talk about our violent society, our narcissistic culture, the effects of violent video games, the degradation of masculinity, social isolation, family breakdowns, and so on.

Some of these reflections have value. Some of them are rather silly. Many of them are, in part, ways of distracting ourselves. We want to reduce the fundamental questions of life to social and political problems that can be fixed somehow.

Let's figure out what causes this, and fix it!

But many of us are just shaken up and confused. I work in the office of a children's center. Eileen teaches there. We have a six year old daughter. My gosh! There are no words for this.

We have prayers and sorrow and deep sympathy for the families, certainly.

We are also reminded of our own vulnerability, how we have invested ourselves so profoundly in relationships and circumstances that seem to hang by a thread. We are reminded of the presence of the faces we love so much, how dear they are to us, but also how fragile everything is...how easily we might lose our loved ones, even our children.

"Why do people have to die? Why this darkness, this absence, this wrenching separation from someone I love?"

The big questions. We all experience them sooner or later. Even if we are convinced that we "know the answers," our guts will still be torn by their pain.

Christians need to remember this.

Of course, our faith reassures us that there is eternal life, that death has been conquered. There is comfort here; indeed, when life seems incomprehensible we are reminded that our trust in Jesus must be radical and total. We must trust, because it is through love that faith holds on in the most obscure places, the inexpressibly personal places where ideas can seem so cold.

[If I continue writing words here, it is only with the understanding that I'm just stammering, and that I hardly know what I'm talking about. If I write, its only to point to a reality that is infinitely more important than anything I can say.]

Christianity is not "cheap answers to the fundamental questions of life." Christianity is a Person who loves us and endures our vulnerability to the very end, transforming it from within. The "answer" is the way He embraces each of our lives. We are changed by living with Him. We are not changed by a satisfying explanation. We are changed by Him.

There are no shortcuts. We must live through everything, trusting in Him. Especially when we feel powerless and He seems absent. We may not even feel any trust, but still we must trust, we must beg to be able to trust, we must continue to hope even if it all seems wild and impossible. Because He Himself really endures with us all the tears, the separations, the crushed hearts. Really.

He has made it all His own.

He Brought Only His Suffering

This past July was the tenth anniversary of the canonization of Juan Diego. In 2002, I made the second of my three pilgrimages (thus far) to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, where I witnessed this extraordinary event.

It was truly an encounter between two of Mary's "smallest" (and greatest) sons. There was Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin, the first indigenous American saint. And there was John Paul II, painfully crippled by Parkinson's disease, almost immobile, but moved by a palpable love to show his suffering to millions of people.

It was his fifth and final visit to this blessed, troubled land. Love for Christ had exhausted all his talents and his personal and historic greatness.

He brought only his suffering. But he came, because he wanted to tell us again, through his pain: Be not afraid!

Be not afraid of all the darkness in the world.

Be not afraid of your own weakness.

Open all the doors!

Open the doors of your vulnerability,

and of all the scars

and the wounds

and the failures.

People are just poor,

wandering,

lost in themselves but loved by Jesus

inside of all their pain,

and loved by Mary.

Be not afraid to love people.

Jesus is deeper

than all of our inexorable problems.

His healing will amaze and humble us.

And Mary will bring Him close.

Everything is entrusted to her tenderness.

Suffering With Us

"Bernard of Clairvaux coined the marvelous expression: Impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassibilis—God cannot suffer, but he can suffer with. Man is worth so much to God that he himself became man in order to suffer with man in an utterly real way—in flesh and blood—as is revealed to us in the account of Jesus's Passion. Hence in all human suffering we are joined by one who experiences and carries that suffering with us; hence con-solatio is present in all suffering, the consolation of God's compassionate love" (Benedict XVI, encyclical Spe Salvi, 39).

Why Are We Always So Frustrated?

Everything is grace,

Everything is the direct effect of our Father's love. 

Everything is grace, because everything is God's gift....

--St. Therese of Lisieux

Everything? Really??

Okay, I can do the theology here, but when it comes to actual stuff that happens ... its very hard to see everything as a gift. Sometimes "everything" is a train wreck. Where is the "gift"?

At such times, it seems easier to understand that proverb of contemporary worldly wisdom, which might be paraphrased as: "Life stinks and then you die!"

But no. Those are always words of profound dissatisfaction. The human person knows they are wrong. If there is any "resignation" in them, its only in the attempt to make a cynical peace with the idea that the universe is one big scam.

But I can't say "I've been cheated by life" except from the expectation that life is supposed to give me something, that at the heart of life there is a promise.

Thus, people go on hoping for something, and if they say things like this its because they are trying to cope with a sense of frustration that seems to renew itself over and over again.

I usually don't go so far as to say that "life stinks..." (well, not lately anyway). But I do feel that "life is often frustrating."

How can my frustration be a gift? Why do I have to live with frustration, day after day; dull, throbbing frustration aching through the day; frustration like a prison that seems to build walls in every direction? What's the "gift" in that?

Well, frustration provokes me; it challenges my freedom, and my sense of who I am.

In the face of frustration, I can choose to give up. I can say "life stinks" and wallow in pity for my isolated self.

Or I can remember that my very self is a gift, and that this moment of frustration (with all of its bitterness, pain, and incomprehensibility) is a gift because it deepens my awareness of who I really am. It reminds me in a concrete way that I am made for something greater, something beyond my control, something I don't make or measure or manage, something that I can't find anywhere in this world.

Nevertheless, this "something" is real. It is at the root of me, it sustains me, and it carves itself into my heart in the form of a promise.

What does my five year old daughter do when she's frustrated by something?

"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy! Help! Please help!" She asks for help. She asks Daddy to come.

What do I do if I see Josefina crying, helpless, frustrated by something because she's just too small to understand it?

I go to her and pick her up and hold her. She still cries. Sometimes she cries even more. It seems like she doesn't even notice I'm there.

But I am there, and I keep holding on to her.

In Memory of a Friend

"He didn't seem like he was depressed and was always smiling. This is shocking" (Anon).

A bright autumn day

colors

crisp

sunlight flashing on the windows.

A clear day, blue with painted hues of leaf.

I stood strong and tall

in the breezy wind

and felt life once again

like great power

from my head flowing down through me.

With large strides

I passed over the fields

drinking fountains of expansive air.

And with the red sun playing on my head,

I burst through the door

but her face was bloodless white.

I stopped, and suddenly

the October air froze on my skin.

She searched my face

with a gaze of shiny wet cheeks

and spoke your name,

and this single word

had a weight

that said everything.

Fire arose in my bones

and spread all over me

until it found my eyes.

And the sun flickered in the shadows.

              --in memoriam, jp, +october 17, 2005