School of Suffering, Part 4

Studying the high science of Christian suffering

02/27/2024

Having completed the first two courses in the curriculum of suffering, or at least having surveyed them, we turn to the final course of specifically Christian suffering. Buckle up, folks, this may feel like a course in quantum mechanics. Up to this point we have deliberately refrained from citing Scripture passages when discussing involuntary and voluntary suffering. Why? Well, it seemed imperative to allow those subjects to stand on their own two legs of reason and nature rather than invoke revelation and faith. Even so, nothing truly stands alone without God’s grace to support it. But now we may sort of “release the holy hounds” of Scripture and tradition as we attempt to study the subject of Christian suffering per se. That is, we must investigate how the coming of Christ has completely changed the conversation about suffering, pain, and finally death, so we can say with the same bold conviction as St. Paul, “Death is swallowed up in victory” (1 Co 15:54). And I would like to look at Christian suffering under three different aspects: (1) suffering as penance or purification, (2) suffering as a path to perfection, and (3) suffering as a preview of Paradise.

First, St. Paul strikes the right penitential note regarding suffering in Gal 2:20, where he writes: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me.” And St. Paul certainly seems to refer to the stigmata (the five wounds of Jesus) when he added at the end of Galatians: “for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus” (Gal 6:17). In other words, in the Christian mind suffering must start to look like a friend rather than a foe. Why is that? C. S. Lewis gave a colorful example, which resonated with me as I deal with my dog Apollo. Lewis warned: “Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation (suffering) is only too clear…Let [God] but sheathe his sword (of suffering) for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over – I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed” (The Problem of Pain, 107). That is, even though Baptism has washed away the Original Sin of Adam – like a dog given a bath – the old Adam’s tendency to sin is still alive in me – I run to play in the manure heap.

St. Paul described this lingering tendency to sin in Rm 7:23, “I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin which dwells in my members.” In other words, we are in a constant state of war; not primarily with Russia, or Hamas, or totalitarian regimes. But rather waging the forgotten war with ourselves, a war of constant purification. In order for Christ to live in me, my old self must die and that requires suffering, a daily death to self. This is why we perform penances during Lent: fasting, abstaining from meat, giving up chocolate or alcohol, etc. And notice, too, this penance or purification is not merely about physical or financial fitness, and even goes beyond altruistic love of family or nation. That is, while suffering as penance may have some natural effects – not eating chocolate may help you lose weight – its basic outlook and final purpose are entirely supernatural because it conforms us more completely to Christ. C. S. Lewis put it well, invoking John Henry Newman: “We are not merely imperfect creatures who must be improved: we are, as Newman said, rebels who must lay down our arms” (The Problem of Pain, 88). And that spiritual self-surrender demands sustained suffering called penance.

Now, it is one thing to heal a broken leg and get the patient off crutches. It is quite another matter entirely to train to run a marathon. That marathon is precisely the second level of Christian suffering as the path of perfection. Changing metaphors, once we have laid down our arms as rebels, we must train as spiritual shock troops in the Lord’s army. We find a compelling example of striving for perfection in the conversation between the rich young man and Jesus in Mt 19:16-22. Apparently the young man had already overcome many imperfections and had been morally purified because when Jesus tells him to keep the commandments, he confidently answers: “All these I have observed. What do I still lack?” (Mt 19:20). Then Jesus teaches him about suffering as the path to perfection, adding: “If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven” (Mt 19:21). I will never forget Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen once remarked: “There is no crown without a cross.” But that price of perfection (the cross) was too high (for the crown), and so “he went away sorrowful” (Mt 19:22).

May I share with you why I spent three months with the Carmelites before I came to Immaculate Conception? I felt a lot like the rich young man in Matthew 19. I had kept the commandments but still wondered, “What do I still lack?” In other words, I desired a more complete commitment to Christ, in a word, perfection. Forgive me if this sounds arrogant, but I’m being honest. I was not content with merely walking with Jesus, I wanted to run ultra-marathons with the Lord. But after three months in Dallas I again felt like the rich young man and “went away sorrowful, for I had great possessions” (Mt 19:22). And one of my great possessions is the gift of gab: I cannot shut-up. I could not keep quiet long enough for Carmelite contemplation. Nonetheless, entering the cloistered Carmelites would have been a step toward greater perfection. Vatican II taught this in a document called “Perfectae Caritatis” (perfect charity or love). Vatican II echoes Jesus’ words to the rich young man, and to me (and perhaps to you), teaching: “Driven by love with which the Holy Spirit floods their hearts (cf. Rom 5:5) they live more and more for Christ and for His body which is the Church (cf. Col 1:24). The more fervently, then, they are joined to Christ by this total life-long gift of themselves, the richer the life of the Church becomes and the more lively and successful its apostolate (Perfectae Caritatis, 1). That is, perfect charity or love involves the relentless renunciation embodied in poverty, chastity, and obedience. Christian suffering is the surest path to spiritual perfection. And few and fortunate are they who find and follow it.

And thirdly, Christian suffering opens the doors to paradise by affording us a preview of coming attractions. The spiritual masters distinguished three stages of the spiritual life: the purgative, the illuminative, and the unitive. St. John of the Cross, in his sublime book The Ascent of Mount Carmel, offered spiritual souls “instructions for climbing to the summit, the high state of union” (The Ascent of Mount Carmel, I, 13, 10). There we find these paradoxically poetic lines: “To reach satisfaction in all / desire satisfaction in nothing. / To come to possess all / desire the possession of nothing. / To arrive at being all / desire to be nothing. / To come to the knowledge of all / desire the knowledge of nothing. / To come to enjoy what you have not / you must go by a way in which you enjot not. / To come to the knowledge you have not / you must go by a way in which you know not. / To come to the possession of you have not / you must go by a way in which you possess not. / To come to be what you are not / you must go by a way in which you are not” (The Ascent of Mount Carmel, I, 13, 10). This is what Carmelites call the “nada doctrine” of St. John of the Cross – St. John was a Carmelite mystic. “Nada” in Spanish means “nothing.” That is, spiritual union with God requires that we relinquish what is not God, which is everything else. Only if our hands are empty can we receive what someone wants to give us. We cannot be filled with God until we are empty of ourselves. This Christian suffering called self-emptying, desiring nada, therefore, carries us to the heights of spiritual union with God, which St. John describes as reaching the summit of a mountain much higher than the Himalayas.

One of the great, yet surprising, Christological hymns by St. Paul in the New Testament is found in Phil 2:6-11. Instead of lauding the power, wisdom, and love of Jesus (which he does elsewhere like Col 1:15-20), Paul praises Jesus’ humility, self-emptying, and sacrifice of our Lord, writing: “Though [Christ] was in the form of God…[he] emptied himself, taking the form of a servant…and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2: 6, 7, 😎. Paul’s point is that this suffering, humiliation, and ignoble death is what Christianity looks like on earth, even though what awaits us in heaven is the victor’s crown. Stunning as it sounds to common sense, we are most authentically Christian when things are going their worst – and we cheerfully carry the cross – rather than when things are going well.

C. S. Lewis concludes his book The Problem of Pain by audaciously suggesting that this sacrificial self-emptying will continue even after we enter the halls of heaven, although there it will feel rapturous and triumphant. He writes lines I can scarcely comprehend (see what you can make of them): “We need not suppose that this necessity for something analogous to self-conquest will ever be ended, or that eternal life will not also be eternal dying. For in self-giving, if anywhere, we touch a rhythm not only of all creation but of all being” (The Problem of Pain, 157). And then Lewis quotes his mentor George MacDonald, observing: “For the Eternal Word [Jesus] also gives himself in sacrifice; and that not only on Calvary. For when He was crucified He ‘did that in the wild weather of His outlying provinces which He had done at home in glory and gladness.’ From before the foundation of the world He surrenders begotten Deity back to begetting Deity in obedience” (The Problem of Pain, 157). This, therefore, is the fundamental law of all reality, both heavenly and earthly, namely, as Jesus taught: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (Jn 12:24). This, furthermore, is the ultimate sense of suffering. The surprising even paradoxical character of Christian suffering consists in a surrender that leads to victory, a sacrifice that leads to perfection, and a death that leads to life. And if you can learn and live that, quantum mechanics will seem like child’s play.

Praised be Jesus Christ!