Suffering in Culture - Part 4

My wife organizes a weekly presentation at our Parish every Tuesday evening, called Spirituality Tuesday. This is a major excerpt from the presentation called Our Experience of Suffering in Culture and in Faith by Sherry Cassedy, which I found to be a beautifully written thought provoking explanation, and exceptionally relevant to our lives. Although my life’s story is different I am grateful to have been present at this presentation, because it so strongly represents my understanding of suffering. Some of it has been edited and some of it hasn’t, but this is her work alone.

How do we integrate suffering into our experience? How can we follow the examples of Christ to move from suffering to redemption, to new life? A first step is by the example of Mary. Mary suffered greatly, at the foot of the cross, as they took Jesus down from the cross and she held his broken body. The famous image of the Pieta is a witness to her son’s passion, and by her presence and as a sharer in it by her compassion as well. She demonstrates the transcendence of individual suffering. “As though by a continuation of that motherhood through which by the Holy Spirit had given him life, the dying Christ confers upon the Virgin Mary a new kind of motherhood, spiritual and universal, toward all human beings, so that every form of suffering should become no longer the weakness of man but the power of God.”

The image of Mary, the Pieta, actually derives from the words piety, as in faith and trust, or pity, as in compassion. Faith and compassion should be our response to suffering as we move slowly out of the storm and into the light. We need to be able to move toward the light when it presents itself. This movement is part of the secret of transforming suffering. To be aware of our own suffering, not attached to it or stuck within it, but continuing to move, to breathe, and to grow. Surround yourself with family and friends and the movement of love, being open to the love that is moving through you, and remain open-hearted. Understand when grief descends and you withdraw from an open posture to a protective posture. This too is part of the movement. Don’t get stuck in one pose or the other, but allow yourself to move between them.

Gratitude is one of the responses to loss or suffering, and resentment is the other. We do not have a choice about when suffering comes, but we do have a choice in how we respond. Gratitude in its deepest sense means to live life as a gift received thankfully. True gratitude embraces all of life, the good and the bad, the joyful and the painful, the holy and the not-so-holy. Gratitude must be cultivated, it requires practice.  We will have dark days and we will become familiar with the darkness: It can even become a solace. But then there will be a glimmer of light, an opportunity or an invitation, but only a glimmer. We need to be willing to move, to move toward the light. We need to be thankful for the invitation, to be grateful for the moment, for the choice. It becomes a daily practice to see the good, the light, the next step, and to move in the direction of the light.

Compassion means entering into the dark moment of others, who have made these transitions, who are living with grief, with illness, with pain, with suffering, and understanding that while our suffering is unique, we are not alone. We are called to communion and solidarity with others, to compassion, literally “with suffering”. It is to walk into places of pain, not to flinch or look away when someone agonizes but to stay where people suffer. We might think that opening ourselves to the suffering of others will intensify our own, but when we allow our own suffering we are more able to be present to the suffering of others, to find solidarity and comfort, to offer the gift of presence.