It is only fitting that in order to write an authentic account of the beauty of suffering, I should have been given the grace of struggling to find the words to write this article. They, if true, are not my words or thoughts.
Dear friend, I must be entirely honest with you at the outset, I have known little of temporal suffering in my life thus far, apart from trying and often failing to bear an assortment of minor injuries without complaint or a particularly challenging Res run.
I do not wish to deceive you, I do not have the fortune of being able to speak wisely or eloquently in that particular regard. Rather, I desire to speak on a type of suffering, I’m blessed to say, many men and women holier than I have wrestled with: the suffering of the soul.
As I have reflected on and questioned the difficulties in my own life, those of the saints, and various men and women throughout the year, there seemed to appear in the lives of each individual, a strong correlation between spiritual growth, a more perfect participation in the Divine life — i.e. “Love,” union with God in perfect Charity — and immense spiritual suffering taking many forms whether immense anger, confusion, or a profound sensation of abandonment by God, otherwise known as desolation.
This prompted the infamous question of two-year-olds around the world, “Why?” I won’t deny, I’ve been stumped on this one for several months now, an impasse which was only made traversable through God’s generosity, particularly through His kindness in sending many friends and the grace necessary to make sense of this correlation.
It was a rather distressing season in my prayer life and shift in the movement of my heart that opened the floodgates. In the past few months, I had broken up with an amazing young man, whom I genuinely thought I might marry, my relationship with my sisters was strained and littered with deep wounds that had recently come to light while I was living with them over the summer, and senior year was… let’s just say much more challenging than expected in more ways than one.
I could not seem to make sense of the ache I was feeling. Yet, upon closer inspection, it was revealed that beneath the stormy waters of relationships and frustrated expectations lay a deep and ardent desire. Throbbing and aching, this desire would not let me rest, until I recognized it as a call to be more deeply rooted in Love, in God, which oddly enough was also difficult to accept.
It was a pain so profound that my heart felt as if it were being flayed in two, a Divine breaking-open of sorts. When resistance subsided and I finally humbled myself before this desire, I felt as if I were lying battered and beaten, bleeding from every gaping wound, every inch of my soul throbbing and exposed.
When I brought this experience of loneliness and desolation to my spiritual director, he opened my eyes to a perspective on suffering I had never known before. He said that God gives us the grace of suffering as a means of conveying to our hearts the agony of Christ’s suffering.
Therein, He reveals to us a share in the mystery and beauty of the Love He is embodying in His willingness to undergo brutal floggings such that His very flesh was raw and weeping with us in our sorrows and sufferings. He understands our aches and longings more fully than we ourselves ever can.
After this he recommended that I pray with Christ’s Agony in the Garden (Lk 22: 39-46 or Mt 26:36-46, if you’re curious). It was the connection to Christ that made sense of my suffering in a way I never thought possible, it framed suffering in all its forms as a merciful gift from God.
This is where we return to the question at hand, how is the more perfect union of man to God in Love related to suffering? Recently, I learned that the blood shed during Christ’s circumcision was enough to atone for all sin throughout the ages but Christ chose to undergo the suffering, anguish, and betrayal of the Crucifixion to show us how worthy and loveable He deems us to be.
Suffering is the means by which we become more human, our hearts are transformed and softened into the heart of Christ that we might not only feel with more keen sorrow the little quips of the heartless but also be moved to extend compassion more readily, more tenderly.
While at dinner with a friend, I brought this question to him: “So is it suffering that makes us holy?” To which he replied, “No, I think it’s the reverse, that holiness makes us want to suffer.” Here is where all the pieces seem to fit together: holiness is perfect union with God, the reality of which exists in its purest form in the expression of true Charity. Suffering coupled with the desire to Love as God Loves enables us to see our relationships, daily annoyances, and inconveniences as opportunities to grow in the beatitude of perfect Love—Love is patient.
Suffering is a gift because it allows us to grow closer to God through a posture of utter openness and gratitude that does not fear wounds or the pain that may accompany them. For they are opportunities to be united with Christ in His Love for each of us. To be worthy of the gift of our suffering is impossible, it is simply another facet of God’s Love and grace for which we must thank Him every day!
Julia Danehy is a Sophomore in the William F. Connell School of Nursing a hop, skip, and a jump away from her home town of Fort Myers, FL. With the variety of her interests spanning about a million miles long, in her spare time she can be found exploring history, painting, spending time outdoors, whipping up some form of baked good, or reading anything to do with The Theology of the Body/philosophy in general.
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