Suffering: Our way of Connecting to One Another

…the Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,and be killed…

curtesy: http://jkolkman.org/

Suffering is real. There are various forms and sources of sufferings: economics, political, social injustices, racism, religious hatred, greed and jealousy. Suffering is an indication that something is wrong.  If it were not  for the fact that we suffer and experience pain, we might become totally detached and say that "all is well". 
   
Christ suffered and died for our salvation. He paid the price. So why must we still suffer? Making sense out of suffering can be a challenge. Suffering in itself is a mystery. While we may never fully understand why we (should) suffer, we can certainly manage and learn from the experience of suffering.

Suffering can either shut us down or open us up. Quite often it shuts us down at first; we feel isolated and abandoned and the weight of our loss is so heavy that we think the world has caved on us. But in prayer and faith we are gradually opened up, and come in touch with people we have ignored at first.

In my suffering or the experience of others who are suffering, I am slowed down – a sort of time out – and God opens my ear that I might hear (Isaiah 50:1). In listening to the “voices” of suffering through prayer, faith and action, I quickly come to realize that suffering is a path to communion with others.

The following story is told in the “The Legend of the Bells”:

Hazel was suffering with Cancer and came to the hospital in a very contracted state. She was angry and nasty with everyone. The nurses called her a real “bitch on wheels”. One night she was in an excruciating pain. She just let things go, following a series of profound revelations, she later referred to as the ten thousand in pain: a skinny woman with breasts slacked from malnutrition – a starving child sucking at her empty breast; an Eskimo woman – lying by her side dying during child birth; the body of a woman dying at the roadside after a car accident. She came to the realization that her pain was not just “my pain. It was the pain”.

From our isolated suffering environs, we are brought into the world of sufferings where all people live.

A woman, in the story of the Grieving Woman and the Spiritual Master, lost her husband and was in terrible anguish from her bereavement. She has no remedy for her grief. Someone advised her to contact the spiritual master who would help her.

On arrival, the spiritual master told her of his willingness to help her, but added that since it was a chilly day, and he was cold but had no wood, he would need some wood to build a fire to warm him.  In the warmth of the fire her grief will be better addressed.

She was asked to go to each of the many houses in the neighborhood of the spiritual master and collect wood. He told her the neighbors were very generous and would be willing to give her the wood. However, he instructed, “take wood only from the house that has lost no one”. She went from house to house asking for wood with this condition: If no one has lost someone from this house, then I will take the wood. After several hours she came back to the spiritual master with no wood, but her grief was healed.

From this story we learn that we are not alone in our suffering. If we reach out to others in our suffering, particularly those who have had similar experiences, we can be healed. In suffering, we enter in communion with others and the Body of Christ where, mysteriously, healing and suffering coexist.
Each one of us today is experiencing some sort of suffering. Reach out to someone this lent to experience the healing. “Take up your cross, and follow me.”