Co- Authors of the History of Creation

What is suffering?

This is the question that has been on my mind for the past... well while, but specifically the past week. I had the opportunity to be part of a workshop on Inner Peace and Social Justice sponsored by the archdiocese of DC about a week ago. The opening remarks of the priest have stuck with, likely because it's a strong image: the blood and water pouring from Christ's side.

Water and blood, blood and water: the wine of the Eucharist, the water of baptism. In this physical outpouring of blood and water, this manifestation of Christ's love, we are cleansed. We are baptized, the priest said, in the water that flows from Christ's side, just as each Sunday we drink the wine of his blood.

As we are cleansed in and through Christ's sacred suffering, we too are invited and called to our suffering, to our love. To be bathed in Christ's water and Christ's blood we are reformed.

Yesterday this theme was once again brought up in the Homily at mass. Suffering, the Jesuit said, is evil. We are not meant to suffer; God does not want us to suffer.

Warning lights and question marks flew off my face and in my heart. "You have my complete and total attention," I thought, " now where are you going with this?"

"We are not called to suffer. All suffering is evil. Christ spent his life alleviating suffering, casting out demons, curing illnesses, ministering to the poor. Christ shows us that we are not meant (called) to suffer. We are called to love. We are called to love and in so doing to give ourselves away. To give ourselves, which can be scary, which can hurt. Whichever of will lose your life will save it."

We are called to love. Yes, I believe that with all of my heart and being. But does that mean that all suffering is evil? Does it make me somewhat masochistic if I don't think all suffering is evil, that maybe sometimes it can be important? Is it evil that Christ suffered -- Yes, evil that he was tortured and killed, but if suffering is evil it seems like perhaps accepting and allowing that suffering to happen to himself is also evil? Sitting back and allowing suffering is evil.

Yet, isn't it through Christ's suffering and often times our own suffering that we become sanctified? That we, in our woundedness can truly allow God and Christ to enter and lead. Yet, maybe that has more to do with the goodness of God and his ability to use all for his purposes than the actual nature of suffering. God is God and is so good that even evil can be used for goodness.

Father Maher says through studying, mass, reading the Bible and scriptures we can get the word of God in our heads and then down to sit on our heart. but the Word enters our heart when our heart is broken and in this brokeness, there is space and need for the Word to truly enter us, to become part of us.

In this loving so deeply that we give ourselves away, that we love even when it hurts. That love that is so great that it leads to pain and accepts suffering ... if suffering is inherently evil, how can it be the result of something so good, something so of God? but God is good and wants the best for us, but the world is fallen. So while we were created for love and not for suffering, suffering is a part of life. It can be destructive, or salvific but it can only be salvific through God because of Christ. So alone suffering is evil and not of God but the greatness of our God is that even that he can use even that.

Talking with Father Maher as he walked by, he commented: "it's not that everything happens for a reason, but rather that God can create reason from anything." Even suffering. In our freedom, in our God given freedom, that through free will, through freely choosing him, freely choosing to love even in pain, God can bring meaning and we are co-authors of the History of Creation, bathed in blood and water and so freed to love even when it hurts and when we can't love any more, Christ can and will love for us and through us, if we ask him to.