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To Love Is To Suffer
by Lin Wilder
Why is suffering a relevant, unavoidable and perhaps even necessary part of
our lives? What good does it do?
February 13, 2002 / We all know and love good friends and family members who
believe they have earned the right to be free of pain, ignorance, and
unpleasantness. In a society where material comforts abound, the notion of
suffering can be seen as an historic relic interesting but not relevant.
The salvation offered by Christ came not through His teaching or His
miracles but in His suffering and death on the cross. The crucifix forces
the thoughtful worshipper to ponder the economics of the way of the cross:
we were purchased at a fearsome price. And what do we owe in return?
"If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in
suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and
death. Without suffering and death, human life would be incomplete."
"Then I understood the meaning of the greatest secret that human thought and
belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I
understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know
bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved."
*************
"The problem with the Catholic Church is the crucifix." The three of us were
sitting at my friends' dinner table savoring the comforts of their beautiful
Houston home and enjoying a relaxed conversation. My host explained that he
had been brought up in the Catholic Church but he was drawn to the
Protestant churches due to their more "positive" depiction of Christ. The
focus, he explained, really should be on the risen Christ rather than the
crucified Christ, for the crucifixion is so negative.
I was not surprised at the disposition of my friend, nor I imagine are you.
We all know and love good friends and family members who work very hard, try
not to harm anyone else, and who believe they have earned the right to be
free of pain, ignorance, and unpleasantness. In a society where material
comforts abound, the notion of suffering can be seen as an historic relic
interesting but not relevant. Why make the crucifix, an image of pure
suffering, so central?
Yet our Catholic faith is grounded in the conviction that the salvation
offered by Christ came not through His teaching or His miracles but in His
suffering and death on the cross. The uniquely Catholic crucifix forces the
thoughtful worshipper to ponder the economics of the way of the cross: we
were purchased at a fearsome price. And what do we owe in return?
Wasted Suffering
The prevailing values of our culture pose a strange dichotomy: on the one
hand, we turn away from images of suffering in the media, demanding comforts
unknown to earlier civilizations; and on the other hand, we subscribe to the
advertising adage of "no pain, no gain" through a variety of addictions to
exercise, thinness, and work which have become norms of behavior.
The discipline necessary to achieve in sports and in work is a reality we
seem to accept without too much difficulty. Therefore the "suffering" of
delayed gratification for tangible gain is admired and respected. There is
even a fascination with those who are able to demonstrate almost superhuman
endurance and self-denial.
My friend in Houston shares a passion for the high risk sport of mountain
climbing with an increasing number of people searching for meaning in their
frenetic lives. In the recent best seller, Into Thin Air, author Jon
Krakauer describes the events leading to the death of thirteen people on an
expedition to reach the summit of Mount Everest. One of the more interesting
sections of the book was Krakauer's attempt to explain this obsession to
summit Everest: " .I quickly came to understand that climbing Everest was
primarily about enduring pain. And in subjecting ourselves to week after
week of toil, tedium, and suffering it struck me that most of us were
probably seeking, above all else, something like a state of grace."
My friend may also be drawn to the rigors of rock climbing and of
mountaineering because of the purifying nature of pushing the body and will
to its limits of endurance. Nietzsche once said "whatever doesn't kill me
makes me stronger."
In Krakauer's book, for over two hundred pages the reader is immersed in a
story of novice and expert adventurers engaged in an expedition of
catastrophic consequences. With painful objectivity, the author recounts the
fatal combination of greed and selfishness among the more than fifty
climbers competing to summit Everest. Apparently, they didn't succeed in
reaching "a state of grace."
In agreeing to accompany the climbers in order to write a story for an
adventure magazine, Krakauer fulfills his own lifelong ambition to climb the
highest mountain in the world. It seems clear that he wrote this book as an
atonement for the suffering which "will haunt him for the rest of his life."
The overwhelming sense that I had while reading the book was one of waste
profligate waste of money, of lives, and of suffering. "The greatest
tragedy in the world," Cardinal Cushing once said, "is not pain but wasted
pain."
For my friend at odds with the crucifix, the cross without the crucified
Christ makes sense in a world where he believes that his job is to protect
his wife and child protection from the very real fears known to residents
of a big city suburb. His is a world where he seems alone in his struggle to
keep his family safe from the dangers of life in a city where the
disadvantaged greatly outnumber the advantaged. That world requires
strength, endurance, discipline, and focus the seeming antithesis of a God
hanging powerless on a cross. To him the crucifix an image of seemingly
passive suffering appears useless.
Meaning and Suffering
In contrast to my friends' experience is the story of someone for whom
suffering was an unavoidable reality. Upon his survival of Nazi Germany's
program for the extermination of the Jews, Viktor Frankl wrote Man's Search
For Meaning to ordinary people who are prone to despair. The author hoped
that this text could gain a hearing in a world where people had witnessed
horrors that would have been unimaginable in previous centuries. The writing
of the book galvanized Dr. Frankl to develop an entirely new branch of
psychology logotherapy.
Dr. Frankl writes in detached prose about the brilliance of the Nazi method
for total destruction of the human person. He describes the lightning speed
with which he learned that his life, as he had known it, is over. As he
stood in a line waiting to strip himself of all property and clothing, his
turn approached and he pleaded with the guard for the safe keeping of a
manuscript which represented the sum total of his life's work. The guard
responded with epithets and ridicule. It was at that point that Frankl
realized that he had been stripped in a deeper sense. No longer did any of
his educational or intellectual accomplishments matter in this desperate
world of survival.
Considering their brutal life of starvation and hard work, we must ask how
an average person could have maintained the desire to continue the battle to
survive among such unremitting and impossible demands. Why did these
prisoners simply not give up and succumb to the death that was so near at
hand? There were many prisoners who did give up, of course, but this book
and the reason for its writing is to tell the story of those who were able
to make use of their suffering in an extraordinary way.
Dr. Frankl writes that for some, the spiritual life deepened. Those used to
the intellectual life could retreat from the horrors of their circumstances
to a rich inner life of spiritual freedom. The author gives a personal
example during a forced march to work in the ice and wind. . "[A]s we
stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and
again, dragging one another up and onward, nothing was said, but we both
knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. My mind clung to my wife's image,
imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me,
encouraging me "
A Humanistic Response To Suffering
Dr. Frankl continues in this reverie and is transfixed by a world shattering
truth. ...[F]or the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is
proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. Then I understood the
meaning of the greatest secret that human thought and belief have to impart:
The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who
has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief
moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter
desolation, when man cannot express himself in positive action, when his
only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way
an honorable way in such a position man can, through loving contemplation
of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment.
This truth so personally and powerfully experienced by Dr. Frankl about the
salvific meaning of love foretells the development of his theory of
logotherapy. Better than most, this author understands and clearly
chronicles the symptoms of despair: irritability, apathy, and withdrawal
which, if unchecked, can lead to death. Here in these darkest of
circumstances this author defies the prevailing pessimism of his time to
claim that human liberty does exist, that man is spiritually free in his
response to circumstances, and finally that man does possess a choice of
action.
In the concentration camps, there were examples, states Dr. Frankl, often of
a heroic nature, demonstrating that apathy and irritability can be overcome.
We ... can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but
they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one
thing: the last of the human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any
given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Dostoyevsky said, "There is only one thing in life that I dread: not to be
worthy of my sufferings." Discovering this purpose this worthiness is
also critical in the work of Dr. Frankl. "If," he states, "there is a
meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering. Suffering
is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering
and death, human life would be incomplete."
In his daily battle to prevent other prisoners from succumbing to despair
and the death which would certainly ensue, Dr. Frankl looked for a reason
for the prisoner to continue living. Rather than asking what we expect from
life, Frankl insisted that we must ask what life expects from us.
The Christian Response To Suffering
"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that
whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John
3:16). The entire Christian mystery of suffering is contained in these
astonishing words. In his letter, On Human Suffering, the Pope explains that
the words refer to suffering in "its fundamental and definitive meaning" and
reminds us that the gift of the Son was to prevent humanity from suffering
the definitive evil: loss of eternal life or damnation.
We "perish" when we lose "eternal life." Christ came then, not to protect us
from physical or moral suffering but from the death which sin brought into
the world. "The mission of the only begotten Son consists in conquering sin
and death. He conquers sin by His obedience and He overcomes death by his
Resurrection" (On Human Suffering, 14 ).
As Christians, we know that God created our will and intellect in order that
we might choose to live our life in accordance with God's purpose for our
lives. We believe that, despite original sin, God still makes it possible
for us to live in union with Him. We believe that only by surrendering to
Him can we find peace and joy, and we each do daily battle with ourselves to
enact our faith and our trust in our God "Our Father."
Somewhere along the way to adulthood, as the world takes hold of our
questioning minds, we lose our childlike trust in His love. We find the
concept of a love which is unconditional, unmerited, and more and more
difficult to accept. Our belief about God then takes on our human standards
of merit and justice. A God who punishes conforms more easily to our
man-made sense of justice.
For example, we may believe that God might take our child or husband through
death because of the punishment we merit for our sin. Therefore we attribute
all earthly events to be His will. Like Job s friends, we imbue each tragedy
with the hand of God; we lose all ability to understand the nature of God,
of His love.
That God who sent His only Son to die for us and our sin represents a love
that is impossible for us to grasp. Our Catechism states that the first sin
was committed when man "let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and,
abusing his freedom, disobeyed God's command. All subsequent sin would be
disobedience and lack of trust in his goodness" (CCC, 397).
Suffering as Redemptive
For God so loved the world that He gave The popular notion of love cannot
explain love like this. Our worldly culture depicts love as an emotion felt
for the beautiful, the excellent, and the perfect. But husbands and wives
know love as sacrifice; making sacred a love only God can give, long after
the romance and beauty have faded. Parents know the love of a child as
sacrifice given out of joy freely. God gave His Son to the world to free
man from evil and both the Father and the Son embraced the suffering that
the gift entailed.
Our Holy Father writes, "Human suffering evokes compassion; it also evokes
respect, and in its own way it intimidates ... this special respect for
every form of human suffering must be ... expressed here by the deepest need
of the heart, and also by the deep imperative of faith" (On Human Suffering,
4 ). The Catholic understanding of suffering takes us to a new dimension:
the dimension of redemption a very different context for suffering from
that of justice or even of human love.
Christ eradicates from human history the "dominion of sin, which took root
under the influence of the evil spirit, beginning with original sin, and
then He gives man the possibility of living in sanctifying grace" (On Human
Suffering, 14). In Isaiah 53: 2-6, the passion of Christ is related with
eloquence: "But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for
our iniquities; upon Him was the chastisement that made us whole .and the
Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of [us all]." The Man of Sorrows of that
prophecy is truly that "Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (On
Human Suffering, 17).
Participation in the suffering of Christ then, has a twofold structure. If
we are to share in the passion of Christ, it is because He has opened His
suffering to man. There is a reciprocity here: Christ shares in all
sufferings of man while man, by rediscovering Christ's redemptive action,
finds new content and meaning for his suffering. If we play a part in this
redemptive action, does this mean that the redemption Christ brought to the
world through His passion was incomplete? The Catechism explains clearly
that the passion of Christ was perfectly sufficient and truly His work, but
also that we are invited to participate in it (cf. CCC, 1521).
Christ made clear to His followers that the price of friendship with Him was
high: "If any man would come after me let him take up his cross daily." His
moral demands of the disciples could be fulfilled only if they would "deny
themselves." But here we must be very careful. If we view the sacrifice of
Christ as merely an exercise of asceticism which we must imitate, then our
non-Catholic friends' antipathy becomes understandable. We contribute more
to this error when we decide to fast or to mortify ourselves publicly and
yet more when we suggest that suffering is God's will for us. We must take
care to always link our suffering to the passion of Christ and use it as a
channel of grace for ourselves and others.
Deeper Transformation Possible Through Suffering
Pope John Paul explains the dignity and nobility of a vocation of suffering
with many of the same phrases and thoughts as did Dr. Frankl when he
explored those heroes in the concentration camp who were able to find
meaning in those most dreadful of circumstances. But as Catholics we know we
are invited to union with Christ; we can see in our suffering a meaning even
greater than Frankl finds. The Pope states that "it is suffering, more than
anything else, which clears the way for the grace which transforms human
souls" (On Human Suffering, 26) Throughout the ages we find countless
martyrs who were converted through the experience of uniting their personal
suffering with Christ; such a person, writes Pope John Paul, once uncovering
the salvific power of suffering, becomes a completely new person.
In Christianity, the redemptive sacrifice of the only Son means that human
evil is neither definitive nor fundamental. That fact, declared the Pope,
clearly distinguishes Christianity from all forms of existential pessimism.
Salvation proclaims victory over evil. "I have conquered the world, says
Christ" (John 16:33).
To be human is to suffer. We are commanded to love and in the act of loving,
we sacrifice part of ourselves as we give ourselves away. Whether our
suffering takes the form of a loss of loved ones, health, our culture and
personal freedoms, or a trusted and valued friendship, we all suffer from
the youngest of us to the oldest. When suffering comes to us, it can bring
feelings of utter powerlessness and futility or it can bring us closer to
participation in the mystery of the Body of Christ.
We were each created for a purpose only God can know, a purpose that the
world will know only if we open to His love and His will. Thus if I choose
to unite my backache, headache, or heartache with Christ on the Cross, then
I know that wondrous graces flow into the heart of a widow who has lost her
only son in Africa, a lonely teenager contemplating suicide in New York, or
a woman ravaged with cancer in San Francisco. The Pope urges us to remember
that our pain, trivial or overwhelming, will not go wasted.
"In a world awash in pain, how tragic that all this pain is wasted, pain
that could be united with the suffering of Christ to achieve enormous good."
These words of John Cardinal Cushing beautifully reveal the mystery of
suffering. At the time when Jesus appeared to be utterly powerless, the
Cardinal continues, " He was radiating the greatest power ever unleashed in
the world. When He was crying out, 'My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken
me?' He was filling billions of hearts yet to come with comfort, with
peace." How can we refuse His generous invitation to share the very grace
that the world so desperately needs?
Reprinted with permission from Canticle. All rights reserved. Dr. Wilder
writes from Connecticut.