THEOLOGY AND SPIRITUALITY
Charles Delhez, sj
Christian spiritual language frequently uses the expression: to offer one’s sufferings. The Apostleship of Prayer invites its members to begin their day with the offering of their joys and sufferings. The expression may not be a felicitous one, insofar as one can only offer good things. And suffering is by definition bad. “One doesn’t offer bad things, a cancer sufferer interviewed by André Sève said. Christ didn’t offer his Father his suffering, he offered him what he became through this suffering: a being who went, as Saint John said so aptly, to the very end of love, to those peaks of love which saved us…” (La Croix, April 20, 1988).
Consequently it is dangerous to speak in this way. God appears as a sadist and there is the psychological risk of fostering in human beings a doloristic mentality. It must be admitted that Christian spirituality has not always avoided this trap. The title of an article in a parish journal read: Suffering is fertile. It began with the statement: “I believe that suffering was granted to us by God in a great surge of love and mercy”. This is an unacceptable evaluation of suffering, for we must not forget Christ’s prayer in the garden of Gethsemane: “Abba, Father, everything is possible for you. Take this cup away from me!” However he added (how long did it take him to pronounce this second phrase?): “But let it be as you, not I, would have it” (Mk 14:36), the will not that Christ should suffer, but that he accomplish his mission of love.
In fact there is an implicit or missing link in this spiritual attitude of offering. What is agreeable to God is in fact the love which can find its place in the very heart of suffering. This was Christ’s attitude.
Freedom transfigures destiny
At times everything seems to escape us. We are caught up in an inextricable situation which we no longer are in control of. This was Jesus’ case on the evening of Maundy Thursday. He was surrounded on all sides by the inevitable. Would he let this get him down, would he sink into despair or revolt, or risk all for all? But what was the use? Why exhaust himself in vain? The die was cast. He would leave only a bitter taste, a trail of ashes behind him. Or else would he know how to give a sense to what had come his way?
Thus Jesus was caught up in the great web of history, and gave life to a love song. In the course of his last meal we hear him give thanks and sing some psalms. He takes his life in his hand just as one takes bread and gave it to his friends: “This is my body, offered up for you”. His death became a gift. What could have been a scandal became an offering to God. What should have led to definitive separation became a sign of friendship. What seemed a fatality became an expression of love: “A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends” (Jn 15:13).
Even when everything seems to be slipping through our fingers we still have freedom: the freedom to say no or say yes, to revolt or accept. We cannot always change circumstances and events but we can always change ourselves, convert our gaze, transfigure our lives thanks to love.
In giving sense to his life, Jesus rediscovered the sense of all life. Life is to be given and not consumed. Life is not more beautiful because it is longer but because it is offered. People might have thought that it would have been more useful for Jesus to continue his mission but, paradoxically, he made it a success through accepting an end to his action.
We no longer move along the scale of what is profitable but of what is a free gift. The beauty of a gift does not lie in its usefulness but in the person giving it and the love he puts into it. “This evening Jesus is offering the masterpiece of his life, which he will sign with his blood. On that Thursday Jesus gathered his days into a single bouquet to give to men and women under the Father’s gaze” (La Croix, April 8, 1993) (Msgr Jacques Noyer, bishop of Amiens).
In spite of non-sense
“It is a mistake to believe that the meaning [of suffering] can exist somewhere independently of the suffering person… It is up to everyone to give a sense to events which touch him/her in order to keep his/her history open. The question to ask is not: what is the sense of this trial? But: how can I give a sense to my life in spite of the non-sense which this trial instills into it?”
“Faith does not free a Christian’s life from the feeling that certain events of his life remain inexplicable, senseless. I see a sign of this in Jesus’ last words before dying (according to the gospels of Matthew and Mark): ‘My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?’ … No, faith decidedly does not suppress the confrontation with non-knowledge, with the feeling that it would have been better if some events in life had not occurred. Faith, on the other hand, allows us not to be deceived by these sentiments of stupidity and absurdity, by the “black holes”. It allows us to find, again and always, new resources for the fight in favor of the sense of life” (Xavier Thévenot, Souffrance, bonheur, éthique, Mulhouse, Salvator, 1990, p. 28-30).
A supernatural use of suffering
Arlette, at seventeen, contracted leukaemia at a time when it was an incurable disease. In the midst of this trial, which she knew was mortal, she discovered God who loved her and was waiting for her. She started spreading joy throughout the hospital wards. She approached those who were suffering and restored their taste for life. Her life took on meaning when death had already taken her by the hand.
However one day she was unable to stop herself from screaming with pain. This was a blow to her image of pluckiness. She was not proud of herself when she took stock of the day during her evening prayers: “Well! I certainly am no saint! And if - this time - I didn’t know how to suffer ‘in silence’, I’ll simply offer you my screams!”. (J’offrirai d’avoir gueulé, letters and notes by Arlette, presented by Joseph Brosseau, Ed. Ouvrières, 1968, p. 133). Instead of moping and overanalyzing her humiliation she presented herself to God and offered herself as she was: not as a heroine, a champion of stoical suffering, but as a girl who had “broken down”.
When physical or moral pain gets hold of us, it becomes our only horizon. We are tempted to see it and only it, and to talk only about it. “Offering” is maintaining the other person as a priority, of continuing to make him the object of our thoughts and love. The horizon remains open. What already has the flavor of death becomes the place of a mysterious communion.
Jesus wanted to love to the very end. When suffering presented itself he did not hold back. He took it by the hand to make it an expression of his love. He offered it: it is for you that I accept it. “This is my body offered up for you, my blood shed for you” (cf. Lk 22:19-20). Because it was offered, because it was lived for his disciples, the scandalous cross bore far more fruit than all the miracles he had performed. On the cross it was Christ’s love which saved us and not only his suffering.
Jesus placed suffering at the service of love. Evil had lost none of the opaqueness of its mystery but from then on it could have meaning in the light of the resurrection. This is undoubtedly what the philosopher Simone Weil meant when she said that it was not a matter of looking for a “supernatural remedy against suffering, but a supernatural use of suffering” (Simone Weil, La Pesanteur et la grâce, Presses Pocket, p. 96).
When this attitude of offering is clearly understood it contains a fruitful element. I suffer precisely because I no longer can find a meaning. “I don’t complain about suffering, but about suffering for nothing”, the physiologist Claude Bernard (1813-1878) used to say. Why is this cancer eating into me? Why did my child die? There are no answers to these questions. The temptation of absurdity lies in wait for the person who has been hard hit by pain. If we are unable to give some sense to our suffering, “we say that we are suffering for nothing. And we suffer not only over the suffering but over the absurdity of the suffering” (Jean Guitton, Mon testament philosophique, Paris, Presses de la Renaissance, 1997, p. 245). And Jean Guitton illustrates this truth with a visit to the dentist. If we don’t understand the treatment and its utility, the physical suffering becomes all the more painful.
Naturally we don’t seek suffering. But when it presents itself how shall we deal with it? Shall we intensify it by transforming it into hatred, rancor, despair? Or turn it into an expression of love, even though a painful one? The Indian poet Tagore went so far as to write: “The most important lesson to learn is not that suffering exists but that it is up to us to transform it into joy”. And the theologian Jean-Pierre Jossua said: “Someone who is saddened has three ways open to him: a normal person weeps, a person who is higher up remains silent, a person who is at the top turn his sadness into a song” (Jean-Pierre Jossua, Lettres sur la foi, Cerf, Paris, 1980, p. 146).
Inoculating love
When we speak of offering our suffering it is not a matter of adding in to Christ’s suffering but of associating it with his, i.e. of living in with him in the same spirit in which he himself lived it. He saved the world through “inoculating” love into the very heart of suffering, there where hatred, jealousy and revolt often settle. Thus we do not add our suffering to his, we accept that he already took it on himself on the cross.
“Offered” suffering is no longer total suffering. It becomes love. It discovers the fruitfulness of love. It acquires a sense which I may only understand much later when I look back on my life. At that point I will see the whole secret plan. I will realize that through my choices I have written up a wonderful story. I will be surprised to discover its fruits. For the world will be saved by love, which is stronger than death. “Suffering with love”, a hermit said, “is no longer suffering, it is loving”.
So much suffering hits us without our having chosen it. The spiritual order “offer your sufferings to God”, Xavier Thévenot said, “needs to undergo an operation of clarification. As has been said, this formula is remarkably powerful: it changes the suffering person’s focus and makes him realize for a moment that the savour of death contained in the suffering can become the place for an exchange with him whom he loves”. At this point everything can be transfigured.
The philosopher Gabriel Marcel wrote a few lines which could be taken as a felicitous commentary to this spiritual attitude: “I would be far more inclined to say that, on the contrary, suffering on principle is evil, but that under certain conditions the human soul (…) can freely - I mean through a free act - transmute this evil, not strictly speaking into something good but into something which is susceptible of radiating love, hope and charity. But still, the suffering soul, through the very fact of suffering, must open more towards others instead of closing in on itself or on its wound” (Gabriel Marcel, La dignité humaine et ses assises existentielles, Paris, Aubier, 1964, pp. 142-143).
As long as we have not won the final victory during our journey down here we will not escape from suffering, for it is with us. We must fight it, of course. But we can only make a frontal attack. We won’t get away without suffering. By systematically running away from it we risk sidestepping essential values.
A Christian’s audacity is almost scandalous: the suffering which seemed a dead-end can become the way to salvation. We can join Christ who, for love, “took our sicknesses away and carried our diseases for us” (Mt 8:17). Through his love, lived even to the extreme of the cross, he saved mankind. The Old Testament had already realized that the sufferings of the just could have saving value even for the unjust. This is proclaimed in the Songs of the suffering Servant (Isaiah): “By his sufferings shall my servant justify many, taking their faults on himself” (Is 53:11b). From the depths of her revolt, Françoise Verny wrote: “In associating myself with him, I confer value on may small miseries, I render evil if not comprehensible at least tolerable since it fits into a divine plan and opens onto mercy” (Françoise Verny, Pourquoi m’as-tu abandonnée?, Grasset 1998, p. 159).
The root of all suffering is the refusal of love. For evil to stop its ravages we must attack it at its roots by inoculating love. Without love our humanity is over. With it, everything is possible. As a child, Saint Teresa of Lisieux wanted to be everything. Her desire to love God and join mankind was so great that she wanted to be an apostle, a missionary, a martyr… One day, while praying, she understood that the essential thing is love. To love where one is. Deep in the bush or in the chapel of her Carmelite convent, in a kitchen or in an office, bringing up one’s own children or taking care of other people’s… “I have finally found my vocation, it is Love!…” she cried. Through loving she would be at the heart of this great body which is the Church. She was to live this vocation on her bed of suffering, for she died at 24 of tuberculosis which at that time was incurable.
Love is so great that it can live in the smallest thing, a single word, the apparently most insignificant gesture. And this is within everyone’s reach, even the depressed or the sick in their hospital beds. If the most austere, the most mechanical or most solitary work is carried out with love it transfigures our earth and surrounds it with light.
Love, even if you don’t feel well, even if you have not yet obtained everything you desire and your problems have not yet been resolved. Even if you live in extreme poverty, love. Love when people make fun of you and you are ridiculed. Love, even when you do not get an answer and think you are being ignored. Love, even if physical or moral sufferings come to break on the shores of your life. If you love where you are, the fruit will ripen somewhere.
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote to his sister Marguerite, who was seriously ill: “Oh, Marguerite, my sister, while I - devoted to the positive forces of the universe - was crossing the continents and seas, passionately engaged in watching all the shades of the earth come to the fore, you, unable to move, lying in your bed, were silently transforming within the very depths of your being the worst shadows of the world into light. In the Creator’s eyes, tell me which of us will have the better part?”
Evil cannot indefinitely resist the attacks of love. The tomb was unable to hold the One who loved so greatly. Tears will not endlessly bathe the faces of those who have learnt the art of loving from Jesus. Jesus turned an instrument of torture into the throne of love. Will he not turn this “valley of tears” into a Kingdom of joy?
In the crucible of suffering
When we are in the throes of suffering this may appear absurd and lead to revolt. But when we come through and look back, taking stock of the weeks or months which had seemed so sterile, we sometimes discover that - all in all - the trial has been beneficial. It has brought us out of ourselves and our egoism. It has purified us.
Discovering a sense in suffering is also seeing it as a moment of growth. “And, from one defeat to another, he grew” (R.M. Rilke). The crisis which causes suffering can be salutary and provoke an enrichment of our humanity. “The most demanding things are often those which bring the greatest number of deep satisfactions, and the harsh winter prepare the best crops” (Léo Missine, Vers une vieillesse pleine et heureuse, St. Augustin 1998, p. 81), wrote Léo Missine. A wine grower explained to me one day how the best wine did not come from vines planted in the plain, but on the slopes, where the roots have trouble making their way in the stony soil. “The more the vine suffers, the better the wine”, he said. But unlike the vine, where the result is automatic, in human beings the transfiguration of suffering into place of growth is the fruit of their freedom.
“The path of suffering either breaks or strengthens one’s heart” (Xavier Emmanuelli, L’homme n’est pas à la mesure de l’homme, Presses de la Renaissance, 1998, p. 51) someone once said to Xavier Emmanuelli, one of the founders of Médecins sans Frontières. In fact the real risk of suffering is that it can lead us to renounce what is good: “You don’t want suffering, then you don’t want to love”, one of Claudel’s characters said. But it can also be a place of purification, of real birthing and, in its own way, of contributing to what is good. The pangs of childbirth will always be painful, but for the mother they are an opportunity to love her child and her child will be worth all the more to her.
What solidarity comes to the fore during natural catastrophes, and what gestures of sympathy when someone is suffering! Looking back on a war, we see that it also produced acts of heroism, gestures of love, noble thoughts. A prayer found on a pious Jew in the camp of Treblinka expresses this in a shattering way: “Lord, when you return in glory, don’t only remember the men and women of good will. Remember also the men and women of evil will. But do not remember their cruelty, their ill-treatment, their violence. Remember the fruit we culled because of what they did to us. Remember the patience of some people, the courage of others, the good companionship, the humility, the nobility of soul, the faithfulness they awakened in us. And, Lord, make the fruits we have culled be their redemption one day”.
If there is a time for revolting against evil, there is also a time for consenting to it and letting it produce the good that it can bring with it. Of course this is no reason for wanting evil in view of something good, but when it is with us there is still the possibility of producing something good. Though we must never choose evil, we must admit that it can be an opportunity of a greater good. Felix culpa - felicitous offence - the paschal liturgy intones concerning the sin of human beings which earned them such a Saviour. Thus you can turn suffering into the expression of your love and God can have the cross flow into a living source.
What did I make of it?
The sense of suffering will never be a clear answer to the question: Why me? But to the question: What did I make of it? Consequently from time to time we ought to review our history and turn it into a song of thanksgiving. Once we have gone beyond the very understandable stage of painful questioning and even of revolt we will be able to rejoice over the distance we have covered.
In an astonishing text Marcelle Auclair has Bernadette sing a veritable litany of thanksgiving at the moment of her death, showing us that holiness is a transfiguration of everyday life: the bitterness becomes thanksgiving. Everything which seems to us a cause for revolt becomes the meeting place with the mysterious God. This is not a prayer to be understood but one to be culled in the heart of the young woman who lived it: “For the poverty of father and mother, the ruin of the mill, the wretched beam, the wine of lassitude, the black sheep, thank you Lord! (…) Thank you, thank you! For if there had been a more ignorant and stupid girl on earth you would have chosen her. (…) But thank you for having me be Bernadette, threatened with prison because she saw you, gaped at by the crowds as if she were a strange beast, this Bernadette who was so very ordinary that when people saw her they said: ‘Is that it?…’ (…) For this pitiful body you have given me, this sickness of fire and smoke, my rotten flesh, my decayed bones, my sweating, my fever, my dull or sharp pains, thank you God! And for this soul you have given me, for the desert of inner drought, for your night and your flashes of lightning, for your silences and your thunderbolts, for everything, for you, absent or present, thank you Jesus!” (Marcelle Auclair, Bernadette, Bloud et Gay, Paris, 1957, pp. 232, 241 and 242).
In suffering one can also live the spiritual solidarity among the living which the Christian faith calls the Communion of saints. “It is my favorite dogma of the Chatolic Church”, the child psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto declared. “People who are alone and suffering contribute towards helping other people somewhere on earth, they do not suffer in vain… and thanks to other people’s prayers a friend can find relief” (In François Vayne, Comblée de grâce, Paris, Nouvelle Cité, 1988). Janine Chanteur, the mother of a brain-damaged daughter, describes her passage from revolt to faith in her book Les petits enfants de Job: “I no longer expect faith to be a recipe for consolation; it doesn’t lighten the pain, it situates it, and that is a big step. Hope rises, while the chain which binds each one to everyone else becomes more luminous. The Communion of saints: for a long time I thought this was the family of canonized saints. Now I am beginning to see something else: we all hold together, the young and the old, the dead and the living, atheists and believers, the handicapped and the healthy. We are the pyramid which builds the Kingdom. If one of us weakens, it totters, when we accept our place, we built it” (Janine Chanteur, Les petits enfants de Job. Chronique d’une enfance meurtrie, Seuil, 1990, p. 112).
Some time later, when she came to re-evoke her experience, she was able to truthfully say: “God was waiting for me by the side of my sick child. He had neither ordered nor allowed her sickness. I know that today. Evil is a consequence the causes of which we are unable to grasp. It is a trial only from our point of view. God neither wanted it nor allowed it to happen” (Janine Chanteur, op. cit. p. 119. The book ends with the reflections of Anne, one of Janine’s daughters, who while typing the manuscript discovered this inner world which had remained hidden. “What I myself know today is that happiness does not consist only in joys. It also consists in many trials”, p. 126).
To conclude let us evoke what used to be called the “small sacrifices” which Teresa of Lisieux called “practices” in her autobiographical manuscripts. Let us repeat once again that the point is not one of giving value to suffering for itself. We no longer live in the time of the flagellants. But when we meet it along our way, there may be a positive way of living it. Here is a short anecdote which is worth its weight in gold: “Sister Noel had gone to dig in the garden. Lost in silence and prayer, she hadn’t noticed that her feet had frozen in her clogs. While Sister Marie-Cécile was medicating her she was more and more filled with the desire to take her share of the crushing sufferings which afflict so many human beings. It’s fair enough, isn’t it, to want to share not only the life but also the pain of the people who pay the consequences of the evil committed by others? Sister Noel chose to transform the evil of extreme cold into love; by doing this she destroyed in herself a little of the evil of the world; she took on a little of the suffering of those who rebel against the cold. She took her mysterious part… We must not allow ourselves to be overcome by evil, on the contrary we must take it in hand to prevent it from pursuing its deleterious course in the world” (cf. Emmanuelle-Marie, OP, Marie-Madeleine a encore quelque chose à dire. L’utopie de Béthanie, Nouvelle Cité, Paris, 1986, pp. 126-131).
We can take on some of the evil in the world and turn it into love in order to save, together with Christ Crucified, the whole of humanity. Will the bondage of life make us bad-tempered, grumbling and complaining against fate and heaven, or shall we suffer them gladly, our hearts filled with a love stronger than death?