BEING WITH THE SUFFERING

I will be speaking to 70 Christian medical student at a retreat. The retreat is called BEING WITH THE SUFFERING. I will talk to them about various aspects of being with people who are suffering physical, emotional or spiritual anguish. I have suffered all three. Physical pain is the easiest to treat with modern pain medications and techniques. The latter two are harder to reach and treat. It is my experience and my opinion that spiritual suffering is the most excruciating.

Being with the suffering can be a daunting exercise -- unless one is merely speaking about superficial comfort or momentary kindness. I will be talking about being with, entering into or suffering with one's patients and this will undoubtedly involve feeling their anguish and grief. This involved enormous internal risks for those willing to do it. Why? Because  it will inevitably make the person who comforts the afflicted face their own inner poverty. Everyone is afraid of sickness and death (that's why euthanasia can be so attractive).

It is so much easier to live in a beautiful world with beautiful people rather than live in a less beautiful world, as it really is, and try to bring it beauty.  It's hard to befriend people who are spastic, drool, are ugly, dirty themselves or smell bad. Yet that is the self-sacrificing love our Lord showed to humanity. We are called to imitate Him.

Not all sickness or disability can be cured. When curing is impossible, caring is still possible and the most effective form of pain relief.