The cross, like Christ himself who was “set for the fall, and for the resurrection of many” (Lk 2:34) is either a stumbling block or a stepping stone. Suffering is not a neutral. It either baffles and embitters or else elicits faith. Once the soul has seen, however dimly, that there must be a point in having to undergo the adversity of the moment, and has surrendered to it, there is experienced a detachment which no amount of study or self-devised ascetic practice can bring about. This is not to claim that the moment of surrender is immediately followed by a blissful sense of peace. The sense of peace is much like any other sense: it comes and goes, and you are never quite sure whether you have got it or not. Detachment is something more settled, something that admits of proof. And this, after all, is only what you would expect as the necessary product of faith—particularly of the faith which has accepted the process of spoliation. Deprived of material support, disconcerted by seeming unfairness, uncertain as to what to do next, the soul takes the long view and plunges into the ultimate promise held out by God. This is hope. As a matter of fact, it is all three theological virtues: faith, hope, charity. Suffering brings faith out of what could be infidelity, hope out of what could be despair, love out of what could be hate. The cross is a signpost: it marks the parting of the ways.
If it was on the subject of sacrifice that Cain parted from Abel, and the bad thief parted from the good one, it would probably be the question of sacrifice that determines the direction of our own lives. Leaving aside for the moment the negative aspect—the consequence of refusing the cross when it is offered—we can instance here, in concrete case, the positive effects of voluntary acceptance. Take the experience of St. Paul under the pressure of what seems to have been an abiding trial. “There was given me,” St. Paul tells the Corinthians, “a sting of my flesh, an angel of Satan to buffet me. For which thing thrice I besought the Lord that it might depart from me” (2 Cor 12:7–8). Even to St. Paul, with all his insight into the ways of God and into the working of men’s minds, there was mystery in suffering. Had there been no problem, he would not have asked to be relieved of the trial. The words “sting of the flesh” may refer either to some physical infirmity or to a temptation of some sort. Whichever it was, it was felt to be more than he could bear, and evidently he judged it to be doing him harm spiritually.
St. Paul felt, as we so often feel, that the trial was threatening his peace of mind, his usefulness in the job God had given him to do, his perseverance. Do we not all at some time or another imagine that if only this particular circumstance were altered, everything would go well? If only I were in a different place, if only I had a different superior, if only people would accept my idea, if only I could be left alone to get on with my work. So it goes on. In St. Paul’s case, the trial persisted and his petition was rejected. He was told by God to get on with it. “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor 12:9 NASB): you can manage without breaking down. God invites Paul—no, he commands Paul—to trust. God makes himself responsible for the help which is needed.
Once it was made clear to St. Paul that God meant the trial to continue, anxiety ceased. The saint did not go on praying to have the trouble removed. Had he not seen that the trial was to the greater glory of God he would have repeated his petition, but now he saw and there was no need. Even more interesting to us about all this than that an apostle should start imploring to be let off is that, having started, he stopped. It shows how he accepted without further question the ruling of God and set about living with his affliction instead of trying to get rid of it. The lesson to be learned from this is that as soon as we recognize God’s will to be different from our own, we start coming to terms with our disappointment. We are not obliged to give up praying for a change of plan, as St. Paul evidently felt obliged, but we are obliged to give up pushing against the plan as it is for the moment.
The reason why St. Paul gave up after three attempts is that a revelation was granted to him. Lacking a revelation, there is no reason why we should not go straight on asking. Indeed our Lord commends such perseverance in prayer. Neither the Syrophonecian woman nor Bartimaeus stopped praying when their requests were not heard: their prayers were granted because they were courageous and confident enough not to leave off. The illustration that our Lord gives of the man in bed whose midnight visitor keeps calling for food, and that other illustration of the judge who is pestered by an importunate applicant, can be understood in only one sense—that we do need to keep up the prayer if we expect to be heard. This being said, and if our requests are not granted however long we persevere in repeating them, we bow submissively to disappointment. No cynicism, no resentment, no self-pity. It is now that we have to believe—and it is all the harder to believe this without a revelation such as was granted to St. Paul—that “my grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor 12:9 NASB).
We have said that detachment is one of the fruits of submission to suffering. See how this is borne out in the case of St. Paul. “In all things we suffer tribulation,” the saint was able to say afterward, “but are not distressed; we are straitened but are not destitute; we suffer persecution but are not forsaken; we are cast down, but we perish not” (2 Cor 4:8–9). He gives the reason for this, namely the principle we examined in the opening chapter: “Always bearing about in our body the mortification of Jesus, that the life also of Jesus may be manifest in our bodies” (2 Cor 4:10).
What else did the sacrifice of his own idea of sanctification give to St. Paul? It did this for him: it changed his anxiety into peace, his sadness into joy. “Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me. For which cause I please myself in my infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ. For when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Cor 12:9–10). St. Paul went through the puzzling part of suffering and temptation and discouragement, and came out in triumph on the other side. “I have learned,” he admitted, “in whatever state I am, to be content therewith” (Phil 4:11).
Here is perfect detachment, realized through sacrifice. It is what we see in the experience of Job: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; Blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21 NASB). The writer goes on to say that “in all these things Job sinned not with his lips, nor spoke he any foolish thing against God” (vs. 22).
That final comment is important, showing how easy it is, when under the pressure of adversity, to speak foolish things against God. Mistakenly we tend to think that people as good as Job and St. Paul are never in much danger of speaking foolish things against God and crumbling up under trial. This is because we know the end of their stories, where they have come out on top. If they had crumpled up, and stayed crumpled, we would not know them as saints. But St. Paul, we say, was the “vessel of election”: he was singled out by God to be the apostle of the gentiles. How could he have gone wrong, even if he had wanted to? The “angel of Satan,” we must remember, gave him a hard time. Whatever the term means, the powers of evil were out to get St. Paul. It was no mere fancy fight, a put-up job for the sake of appearances: it was a test of faith. Paul had to be tested if he was to fulfill his vocation as the vessel of election, as the apostle of the gentiles. Job in the same way—if in fact there was ever such a person—had to be proved faithful. (Whether Job existed or not, the lesson is the same: he remains as an Old Testament type of Christ. The idea of destruction and restoration, which is the theme of the Job story, is repeated when we come to the gospel story where it is shown in Christ’s death and Resurrection.)
So if there is mystery in the way suffering works, there is no mystery at all in the fruits it produces. Through the tangle of noncomprehension, waste, imperfection, futility—useless and unreasonable to the person suffering—emerges a purified service of love
3
Imperfection in Suffering
In the list of factors given at the close of the foregoing chapter—factors which add to the confusi
on of human suffering—was numbered “imperfection.” This is a line to be considered. Whether imperfection played a part in St. Paul’s experience of suffering, we do not know; the text suggests that it might have—or at any rate that the proximity of evil induced a sense of guilt. In our Lord’s experience of temptation at the close of his forty-day retreat on the mountain, there could be no question of guilt or of the sense of guilt. As truth itself, Christ knew for a fact that imperfection had no place in him. While painfully aware of the proximity of evil, Christ was incapable of doubting his absolute innocence.
But when it comes down to us, the situation is entirely different. With us, we have to be constantly putting up a fight in what may well turn out to be a losing battle. Unlike Christ, we have to budget for imperfection: we are imperfect beings. Our fight is against a force, against a person, with which we have a lot in common. What we have to allow for in our resistance to temptation, in our endurance of suffering, in our coming through the test, is our fundamental weakness. We are fallen creatures. Even with the help of grace there is not much that we do well. In a fidelity-test, such as we are subjected to in the matter of suffering, we dare not claim to be able to come through always with flying colours.
Suffering, as already noted, comes to us disguised. So also does temptation. In our Lord’s case, the temptation was far more subtle than either that of greed, vanity, or ambition. In St. Paul’s case, we have no knowledge. We may be sure that Satan did not present himself with horns and a tail to our Lord on the mountain. Nor was St. Paul required to engage in a sham battle with a funny little demon. We can accordingly conclude that “our wrestling will not be against flesh and blood”—not with anything so palpable as a fellow creature—but with powers of darkness (see Eph 6:12). And the chances are that in the darkness with which we are surrounded we shall fall quite often. It will be our failure, as much as our darkness, that will constitute our suffering.
If suffering were never accompanied by temptation, and if temptation were never experienced without the sense of guilt and failure, where would be the test? It is not for most of us the hardness of serving God that is the difficulty, but the failure to serve him properly. We see so much imperfection in our service and in our cross-carrying that we become disgusted and serve him even less well on that account. What we should learn from the sight of our imperfect suffering is humility and dependence on grace.
Of course we are going to be disappointed in the way we are meeting this particular trial, but the disappointment is part of the trial. It may even be the significant part of the trial, more valuable in the process of purification than the trial itself. It calls for considerable courage to be disappointed in oneself without being discouraged about oneself. The distinction is not an obvious one: it depends on whether the outcome of the trial is defeat and self-pity or the will to persevere despite the evidence of weakness. We shall not be asked by God at the end of it whether we have been pleased or disappointed at the way in which we have suffered. We shall be asked whether we have been ready to suffer for his sake whatever our feelings about it were, whatever our weaknesses were. If we could always look back without disappointment at the things we have either undertaken for God or had to endure for God, we would have a hard time avoiding complacency. Disappointment is a corrective, and highly profitable to the soul.
The Greek philosopher Diogenes once surprised his students—he was an eccentric anyway and made a point of surprising his students—by going up to a statue and asking it to lend him money. The students asked him why he wasted time in doing such a foolish thing. “I am schooling myself,” said Diogenes, “in disappointment.” Whether the disappointment comes from outside, the kind that Diogenes wanted to train his young men to meet, or whether it is from within, springing from a sense of personal inadequacy, it can be disciplined and directed. From something flattening it can be changed into something stimulating. Disappointment does not waste suffering. Weakness does not waste suffering. The only thing that wastes suffering is unwillingness to suffer.
What St. Catherine of Siena said about prayer can be applied equally to suffering: “God does not ask for a perfect work, but for infinite desire.” So long as the soul wants conduct under pressure to move in a God-ward direction there is nothing to worry about. Imperfections in endurance, like distractions in prayer, are merely the shadow, inescapable in our fallen human state, thrown by the substance; the substantial element in pain-bearing, as in praying, is the will to love God. But we tend to forget this and tend instead to hang about in the shadows instead of trying to develop the substance. Shadows lie on the ground, and we look down instead of up. If God’s mercy is such that our prayers will not be valued according to their distractions, it is safe to assume that our sufferings will not be valued according to their imperfections. In the service of God it is asking for trouble, an unnecessary trouble, which gives him no glory, to concentrate on the flaws.
There are only two good reasons for dwelling upon our imperfections. One is to make us penitent and humble. The other is to make us confident in the power of grace. Admittedly St. Paul, on the evidence of words we have already quoted, dwelt upon his infirmities and weakness. No self-commiseration here, no sense of defeat. In fact all the other way: when he was weak, then was he strong—power being made perfect in infirmity. His inability to handle his trials drove him straight into the arms of God: God, from now on, would handle his trials for him. “The weak things of this world hath God chosen, that he may confound the strong” (1 Cor 1:27). Character is built upon weakness—weakness recognized and referred to the higher authority.
It is easy to confuse the strong character with the masterful character. The strong character chooses with his will (“It is our choosing that makes us what we are,” said St. Augustine, who was always choosing the wrong thing until he finally chose to give in to grace); the masterful character merely dominates. The strong character is not one without weaknesses but one who so cultivates what strength he possesses that the weaknesses no longer make the choices. The masterful man often appears stronger than the man of character, but this is because he is more forceful. Masterful men, like the rest of us, have weaknesses. The weaknesses of a masterful man are often not recognized for what they are: they are taken to be the expression of strong passion. But a weakness is a weakness whether it belongs to a hero or to an underdog.
So there is never ground for discouragement in the knowledge that we have our failings. Disillusion about ourselves may be both a salutary trial and the foundation of a new trust in God. It can never be an excuse to lie down and make no further effort. So long as we can lay claim to grace, how can discouragement ever be justified? Discouragement devitalizes, humility stimulates.
More of a menace to the service of God than humiliating self-knowledge is the false reliance we sometimes put upon our strength. Qualities that we see as virtues can be possessed as though we had invented them. “By the grace of God, I am what I am,” St. Paul admitted—nothing more. “His grace in me has not been void” (1 Cor 15:10). Strong qualities, when exercised without reference to grace or God or any particularly Christian ideal, can become weaknesses. This is not because they have been allowed to rot but because they have lost their direction and become ends in themselves.
You may object at this point that the issue is whether you are putting up properly with pain and not whether you are weak or strong. Yes, but it is going to make a great difference to your conduct under suffering if you can acknowledge your weakness and put your whole strength in God. And the thesis presented here is that nothing so surely induces this attitude of mind as evidence of failure, imperfection, waste. You have been looking for escapes from the cross? You have felt resentful toward God? You have set a time limit to your willingness to endure? You have become more irritable and unkind on account of the trial? You say you would not object to suffering if it were not for this patently clear fact that you are doing it so badly?
These are no more than side-effects, mere s
putterings of the imperfect fuel in the fire bucket. They do not amount to much. Their implication is magnified by the devil so as to induce defeat and genuine bitterness. When the trial has done its work, the soul will be able to look back and see how little these instinctive rebellions signified. It is probably safe to say that unless the soul has experienced an inward conviction that God has been badly served, and has at the same time tasted outward humiliation, the purpose of divine providence in the matter has not yet been achieved. Spiritual maturity is reached only when the soul knows how to treat outward and inward frustration.
This is not to claim that we must aim at becoming impervious to adversity. We aim at becoming detached from it. We aim at being no longer ruled by our sorrows, variations of mood, emotions, and the sense of insufficiency. It amounts to no more than the practice of the very ordinary virtue of patience. Though our word patience comes from the Latin, the Greek origin gives a less passive sense and amounts to “continuance in suffering.” It suggests the act of hopeful waiting, of active preparation, of an alert response.
The man, therefore, who is patient under suffering is an agent. He plays a constructive part. He contributes to the work of Christ in suffering for the sake of man. The acceptance of suffering, in the terms outlined by Christ, is the main thing. Absence from defect in suffering is not the main thing. A spirituality which taught the necessity of perfect dispositions under pressure of pain would be doomed—just as a spirituality that taught the necessity of perfect dispositions in prayer would be doomed. Spirituality has to take us as we are.
The Mystery of Suffering Page 3