Human Suffering can draw us nearer to the Redeemer

I saw a man at a hospital visiting his son of about two years of age who was suffering from some sort of respiratory ailment. The small child sat wheezing inside a plastic tent. The father was so agonized to see his tiny son in distress that he had crawled inside the tent and was cradling the child.

I suspect it was probably against hospital policy but to me passing the room, the scene was touching. When I passed the room again, the father was sitting the bedside, outside the tent, in silent vigil; his child slept with labored breathing in the mist tent. Had nurses ordered the father out?

The look on the man’s face spoke volumes: I’m sure he would have traded places with his son in a heartbeat and taken the child’s grief on to himself -- if that was possible. To me the imagery was rather analogous to Christ’s response to hurting humanity. We are sick -- steeped in sin and cut off from our heavenly Father.

The analogy quickly breaks down because, unlike the father of the small child in the hospital room, it was possible for Christ to suffer in our place to reunite us to the Father. The Bible tells that he bore our iniquities and endured our sorrows. Not only did Christ suffer in our place, his willingly submitted to the most ignominious death on a cross to draw us back to the Father.

Saint Basil the Great (c. 330-379) commented further about this:

“Nor was he content merely to summon us back from death to life; he also bestowed on us the dignity of his own divine nature and prepared for us a place of eternal rest where there will be joy so intense as to surpass all human imagination.”

What wondrous love!

What does Christ ask in return for such a great sacrifice and love? He only asks for our love. That is all the payment He desires.

There is a divine principle of love at play here that cuts close to the heart of God. The Creator of man became one of the created. Christ who was one with God before time took on our nature at a given point in time to become a man in order to change our nature to become more like him in accordance with his image than was endowed upon each of us at our very conception. Christ had to be brought low for our sakes that we might be raised up.

Do not be surprised by the apparent contradictions or contrasts. Spiritual truths closest to the heart of God often involve what appears like contradictions to the human mind. In life there is death, in death we find life. Those who are first here on earth will be last in the Kingdom of God. So too, many people who are last now will be first then. In our own strength we find weakness, but in our weakness God becomes strong. Only in utter surrender to Christ can we find true liberation.

There could not have been a Calvary without a Bethlehem. Christ could not have carried his cross without first laying in a manger. We could not have life in Him without sharing in his death. The Incarnation was a restorative, redemptive work.

We read in the Scriptures,

“For those who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you received a spirit of adoption, through which we cry, “Abba,  Father!” The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” (Romans 8.15-17.)

Drawing nearer to the Redeemer
Just as we are invited to enter into his suffering, he enters our suffering and gives it meaning. This is what the Catechism of the Catholic Church calls “Union with the passion of Christ (No. 1521). It is a gift that the sufferer is allowed to unite his suffering Christ’s passion.

The Catechism says, “in a certain way he [the sufferer] is consecrated to bear fruit by configuration to the Savior’s redemptive Passion.” His suffering “acquires a new meaning; it becomes a participation in the saving work of Jesus.”

Human suffering can draw us nearer to the Redeemer.

The father I mentioned who climbed into the oxygen tent to comfort his tiny, wheezing son wanted to identify with the child’s distress. He undoubtedly began to detect their eternal soul-bond deepening, as his son cried, “Daddy!” In a much greater way, our heavenly Father can be found in midst of our distress, through Jesus Christ, comforting and identifying with our agonies.

Suffering can take on meaning as our eternal soul-bond with Christ deepens. We, his children, look up and cry, “Abba, Father!”

Mark Pickup
Email: MarkPickup@shaw.ca

For my latest post "Euthanasia in Catholic hospitals?" go to http://humanlifematters.blogspot.com

Mark Pickup

Longings from the Land of Nod

Originally published in the 16 December 2002 edition of Canada's Western Catholic Reporter newspaper, and later in Celebrate Life Magazine (American Life League).

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I dreamed of sailing a grand tall ship. Initially, gentle billows swelled beneath her massive hull. Gradually the wind began to pick up and it filled the ship’s enormous sails. Silently the large ship started to move as though being pushed by an invisible hand. At first, the bow gently sliced through the water as we moved forward.

The great ship’s speed increased, and soon a marvelous adventure was full speed ahead! Waves crashed against the bow, sending bracing showers of salty spray over the deck to drench me. Seagulls flew squawking alongside the ship—cheering the vessel on to its unknown destination as we banked into a westerly wind. The wooden ship creaked and moaned as the gigantic boom pitched violently starboard and the wind-filled mainsail swung overhead across the deck. Every fiber of my body felt alive—at least in my dream.

Reality is quite different: I live on the land-locked prairie in an advanced state of multiple sclerosis; the closest ocean is a thousand miles away. My sailing dream came as I lay in bed drifting from consciousness, through the Land of Nod [1]toward deep sleep. The dream was so real! I could smell, taste and hear the wind and sea. Eventually a rude awakening came: My eyes flickered open to discover a body that was still half-lead, my electric wheelchair still waited beside my bed. There was no tall ship, only the walls of my bedroom bathed in blue moonlight streaming through my window. Bed sheets rustled, not sails.

Dream recurred

In months to come, the dream started to recur and I became suspicious there was something more than a desire to sail. It was a primal desire.[2] But desire for what? It was spiritual desire,[3] not physical desire or eroticism. My desire had different layers, like the skins of an onion. On the surface was a desire to be free from degenerative disease, the contraptions of disability, frustration and grief. At a deeper level was a yearning for the past—my own past. Another layer deeper still was a desire for the ages, but even that was not the whole of it. At the core of my ecstasy was a longing for something or somewhere else I sensed was just beyond me.

The dream has a generic quality: It does not reveal whether I am crippled or healthy, boy or man, or where the ship is headed. I am simply sitting in a ship observing and experiencing the sensations; all that’s important in my life before becomes insignificant in comparison to the sensation of sailing. The ship in my dream is always seeking yet never arriving. The strongest sensation of my dream is one of longing that transcends the sea, the salt, the wind and desires the source of it all.[4] It is the same fleeting desire or longing I experienced beginning in early childhood before disease, disability, sorrow or pain. It is the same longing that seems to follow humanity.[5]

Primordial longing

C.S. Lewis wrote about transcendent desire in his wonderful little book Surprised by Joy. Later he spoke about it as yearning for a “far off country” or Paradise. Lewis delivered a sermon at the Oxford Church of St. Mary, which he called “The Weight of Glory.” He said, in part:

"I am trying to tear open the inconsolable secret in each one of you—the secret which hurts so much that you take revenge on it by calling it names like “nostalgia” and “romanticism” and “adolescence”; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both. We cannot tell it because it is a desire for something that never actually appeared in our experience. We cannot hide it because our experience is constantly suggesting it, and we betray ourselves like lovers at the mention of a name."[6]

Lewis likened this desire for Paradise to the “echo of a tune we have yet to hear” or “the scent of a flower we have not yet found.”[7] These images strike a full chord for an incurably ill man like me. Suffering intensifies spiritual yearnings, desire, longing for that flower I cannot quite find; it lies somewhere just beyond the door of temporal reality. But what lies just beyond temporal reality that fuels this near-constant yearning? It is certainly not a sailboat, seagulls nor an ocean.

A desire just beyond reach

If someone were to magically plop me into a sailing ship tomorrow, I think it would merely break my heart to discover my fantasy was only a metaphor for something else, something grander, something other-worldly. It would fall short of the ecstasy I imagined; I would soon discover that the thrilling images of wind-filled sails and the sea were inadequate metaphors for something that transcends my feeble mind or ability to even conceptualize. The yearning is for paradise.

The tall ship of my dream cannot reach “the far off land” because the destination is beyond my temporal experience to imagine (or the experience of anyone this side of the grave).[8] I have only tantalizing hints of somewhere else that occasionally wells up from deep within,[9] alluring promises[10] and hope of a far off place[11] -- the scent of the “flower not yet found” to excite my longing.

Metaphors schmetaphors! The images turn bitter if dwelt upon. They only point toward the ancient joys of heaven.[12] They are not heaven. Nature is a poor reflection of paradise, and ships are for mortals of little faith.[13] I remain exiled with all Christians this side of the grave; we are spiritually drowsy, yearning, desiring for heaven’s ecstasy that cannot be satisfied in the natural world, only the next.

I must not rush headlong or prematurely into eternity to seek the object of my desire (Christ),[14] or escape the despair of life inside a diseased and withering carcass. That would presume upon God’s mercy and Divine plan: He is a God of light not darkness,[15] the Author of life,[16] not death. Without light there is no life.[17] Control of life is not mine to seize, plunging it into darkness—only God’s to give and take.[18] Freedom cannot be forced! Paradise rushes for no man’s agenda; the joy of Heaven cannot be pilfered. It is not to possess yet. I am being prepared, purified, refined in a fire, of affliction,[19] made fit for eternity. Foretastes must do for now.

Mystery and hope of life

Obsessing over foretastes, sensations or vapors of the soul is counterproductive and only reveals spiritual immaturity seeking escapism from a miserable fate. The mystery of life is growth, not desire. The hope of life is Christ, not escape from sorrow or pain. In fact, suffering, disability or pain can be a blessing. There is blessing in suffering; the sufferer must look for it and be open to what is being said by it. In his Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, John Donne remarks about human interdependence: “No man is an island, entire of itself.” The same meditation deals with the fruits of human affliction:

“All mankind is of one Author, and one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; …God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice, but God’s hand is in every translation…for affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it. No man hath affliction enough, that is not matured, and ripened by it, and made fit for God.”[20]

Dreams about ships and the sea are enjoyable and harmless. But we must not dwell upon snippets of spiritual ecstasy or fleeting moments of longings. C.S. Lewis said “joy is the serious business of heaven”[21] but growth is the serious business of our time on earth.

Jesus calls humanity to lives of meekness,[22] as He lived.[23] Meekness is more than being mild and gentle. It is a spiritual temperament of the soul that surrenders to the sovereign goodness of God regardless of circumstances. We accept, by faith in Christ, that our trials and sufferings are preparing us for eternity and that our trials and suffering are somehow making us fit to assume our holy citizenship in the Celestial City.[24] Sometimes the fastest way home is the longest road.

I have been chronically ill with multiple sclerosis for more than 23 years. My life has degenerated from being a normal, able-bodied, athletic husband and father to spending most of my days in an electric wheelchair. My next mailing address will probably be a nursing home. By most people’s standard, life is over for me at the age of 54. Some people believe my life was over by age of 30 years when the MS was first diagnosed. Not true.

The sicker I become, the more evident Christ’s presence becomes to me. Like the fourth figure in the fiery furnace with Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego,[25] Christ is with me in the fire of multiple sclerosis: unlike Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego the fire has ravaged my body (but not my soul). Jesus sits with me even in the ashes of my misery and comforts me. He assures me there is a divine purpose to the fiery torments[26] and that we shall walk away from the scorching flames into the warm light of His Kingdom. He talks of water and wind that takes me away from the fire to where I do not yet know.[27] The image is so real—I can hear the wind and feel the spray of water on my face.

Once again, I am overcome by a transcendent longing. At last I understand that the ecstasy is inextricably linked to the divine attributes of God’s love. One day there will be no more foretastes but the real banquet—no more wandering, no more longings from the Land of Nod. I will be home. I will see the Object of my desire—Christ.[28]

Mark Pickup
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[1] Land of Nod” East of Eden (see Genesis 4.16). Nod means to wander, to be exiled (see verses 12 & 14). In a sense all of humanity is in Nod having sinned and cut off from Eden. For the purposes of this short essay, Nod serves as a play on words as in “to nod off to sleep.”
[2] Psalm 63.1; Isaiah 26.9a.
[3] Psalm 42.1-2.
[4] Genesis 1.1&10; Nehemiah 9.6; Hebrews 11.3.
[5] Ecclesiastes 3.11b
[6] C.S. Lewis, They asked for a Paper, (London: Geoffrey Bles Ltd. 1962), p. 200.
[7] Lewis, p. 200.
[8] See Isaiah 33.17&21.
[9] Luke 16.19-22, 2Corinthians 12.2-4; Revelation 21.2-4.
[10] Psalm 49.15; John 1.12-13, 3.16, 5.24-25, 6.40, 11.25.
[11] Hebrews 11.10, 12.22.
[12] Psalm 16.11.
[13] Matthew 14.25-31.
[14] Exodus 20.13. The command “Thou shalt not murder” is non-specific and so we must conclude it includes killing oneself. Saint Augustine in City of God (Book 1. Chapter 20) concluded that the command “Thou shalt not murder” extends to self-destruction.
[15] Genesis 1.3-4; 2Samuel 22.29; Psalm 119.105; John 1.4-5, 8.12;
[16] Genesis 1.26-27; Psalm 100.3; John 1.4.
[17] John 1.5&9
[18] Job 1.21 & 10.8-9
[19] See Isaiah 48.10b
[20] John Donne, Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII.
[21] C.S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, (London, Fontana Books, 1963), p. 95.
[22] Matthew 5.5. W.E. Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words gives the following explanation of the word meek. “ Meek (adjective) PRAÜS or PRAOS denotes gentle or mild. As a noun: PRAÜTËS or PRAOTËS, denotes meekness. In its use in the Scripture, which has a fuller, deeper significance than in non-scriptural Greek writings, it consists not in a person’s outward behavior only; nor yet in his relations to his fellow man; as little in his mere natural disposition. Rather it is an inwrought grace of the soul; and the exercises of it are firstly and chiefly towards God. It is that temper of spirit in which we accept His dealings with us as good, and therefore without disputing or resisting; …”
[23] Matthew 11.29.
[24] John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, the Celestial City signifies heaven.
[25] Daniel 3.24-25.
[26] Isaiah 48.10; Psalm 119.67; 1Corinthians 3.13-15; 1Peter 1.7.
[27] John 3.5-8.
[28] Job 19.26-27; Psalm 17.15; Isaiah 33.17; 1Corinthians 13.12; Revelation 22.4.

Read my post "Including children with disabilities", October 14th 2007, at http://humanlifematters.blogspot.com/.

Mark Pickup

To read my latest post, "Whoopi gets it wrong again" go to http://humanlifematters.blogspot.com/

Mark Pickup

US Conference of Catholic Bishops sought clarification to the obvious

WARNING: This blog may offend some Catholic readers. -- Mark Pickup


In 2005, cognitively and physically disabled American Terri Schiavo was slowly and painfully executed by being denied food and water: This was done under official Florida court decree. Disgusting! Withholding nutrition and hydration is a horrible way to die. Not only was Terri betrayed by the courts that are supposed to protect the innocent and vulnerable, she was betrayed by her Catholic Bishop of Florida’s Saint Petersburg diocese, the Most Reverend Robert Lynch, who did not defend her right to life. Inexcusable! To the day Terri Schiavo died Bishop Lynch failed to defend her despite appeals from her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler.

Confused Bishops
That same year, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) played dumb and asked two questions of the Vatican to which they should have known the answers.

1. Is the administration of food and water (whether by natural or artificial means) to a patient in a “vegetative state” morally obligatory except when they cannot be assimilated by the patient’s body or cannot be administered to the patient without causing significant physical discomfort?
2. When nutrition and hydration are being supplied by artificial means to a patient in a “permanent vegetative state”, may they be discontinued when competent physicians judge with moral certainty that the patient will never recover consciousness?

I remember wondering why the USCCB was pretending confusion. Was it to support or mitigate for a fellow Bishop (Robert Lynch) who was, in my opinion, either guilty of the sin of scandal or came dangerously close to it?[1] Did they find themselves in a quandary because certain Catholic Health Care facilities may have been engaged in the despicable practices of withholding food and water from patients?

Euthanasia
The simple fact is that the intended result of withholding food and water from a patient is death, which is a form of euthanasia: The Catechism of the Catholic Church is very clear in its condemnation of it:

“Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable.”

“Thus an act of omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator. The error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded.” [2]

The issue of burdensome treatments to a patient is clearly addressed in No. 2278 and 2279.

Pope John Paul II's words
Further, a year earlier Pope John Paul II stated in a 2004 address to an International Congress on Life-Sustaining Treatments and Vegetative State. His Holiness said, in part:

“The sick person in a vegetative state, awaiting recovery or a natural end, still has the right to basic health care (nutrition, hydration, cleanliness, warmth, etc.) …I should like particularly to underline how the administration of food and water, even when provided by artificial means, always represents a natural means of preserving life, not a medical act.”[3]

For those American Bishops unable to locate their Catechisms, this stated the Church position clearly. There was no excuse for the USCCB to feign confusion that required further clarification from the Vatican.

Reaffirming the obvious
Nonetheless, they posed the questions and on September 14th 2007 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- the Vatican’s highest theological body -- reaffirmed what Pope John Paul said. Not only it is morally obligatory to give food and water unless the patient is unable to assimilate them, but this obligation does not change if the patient has no chance of recovery.[4]

It is time for Catholic laity to resolutely demand leadership from bishops and faithfulness to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church. Feigned confusion in the light of clarity must not be tolerated by the faithful. Sadly it seems the sheep must lead their shepherds.

The world needs light not fog.

Mark Pickup
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[1] See Catechism of the Catholic Church, (CCC) Nos. 2284-2287.
[2] CCC (No. 2277).
[3] ADDRESS OF JOHN PAUL II TO THE PARTICIPANTA IN THE INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON “LIFE-SUSTAINING TREATMENTS AND VEGETATIVE STATE: SCIENTIFIC ADVANCES AND ETHICAL DILEMMAS”, 20 March 2004, Section #4, (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/2004/march/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20040320_congress-fiamc_en.html).
[4] CONGREGATION FOR THE DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH, RESPONSES TO CERTAIN QUESTIONS OF THE UNITED STATES CONFERENCE OF CATHOLIC BISHOPS CONCERNING ARTIFICIAL NUTRITION AND HYDRATION, (http://212.77.1.245/news_services/bulletin/news/20761.php?index=20761&lang=it#TRADUZIONE%20IN%20LINGUA%20INGLESE).