Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

Thursday, April 6, 2000 When you can’t go it alone By Theresa Sanders Catholic News Service ne day St. Teresa of Avila was out riding when her horse bolted; her carriage was overturned. As Teresa got up and realized her arm was bro ken, she raised her eyes to heaven and cried, “If this is how you treat your friends, it’s no wonder that you have so few of them!” Sooner or later, suffering comes to all of us. We encounter sickness and death, and many of us live with other forms of suffering every day. We might be lonely, hopeless or in the grip of an addiction. We might feel depression, anxiety or a sense of guilt that leaves us exhausted. We often have no control over the suffering we experience. The most we can do is decide how we want to react to it. The truth is, there is no one right way to do that. This is shown clearly in the New Testament accounts of Jesus’ death. —In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus seems at peace with his impending death. As he draws his last breath, he says, “Father, into your hands I com mit my spirit!” Jesus feels a sense of trust that allows him to go peacefully into the life that awaits him. —In Mark and Matthew, on the other hand, Jesus cries out in agony to a Father who seems far away: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Neither one of these reactions to pain is necessarily better than the other. What matters is that we are as open and honest as we can be about what we are going through. God doesn’t expect us to deny our feelings and to pretend that everything is fine when it isn’t. We can be angry with God or at peace with God. We can question God, or complain, or protest, or give thanks. What matters is that we trust God enough to be who we are when we pray. Sometimes, though, when we are in the midst of suffering, we cannot sum mon the energy to pray. Cardinal Jo seph Bemardin, who died of cancer in 1996, wrote about his struggles with prayer in a memoir called The Gift of Peace. He described how, after one of his surgeries, he had neither the desire nor strength to pray. He advised his friends, “Make sure that you pray when you’re well because when you’re real sick, you probably won’t.” At times like this, we may have to rely on friends or the church as a whole to pray for us. When we are too sick or too angry to pray, we can ask others to lift us up to God and to place us in God’s hands. Cardinal CNS photo of family at plane crash site from Reuters The Southern Cross, Page 9 All contents copyright© 2000 by CNS Bernardin wrote: “I go back to one word: ‘connected.’ Without prayer, you cannot be connected or you cannot remain united with the Lord. It’s )- solutely essential.” Even the act of asking others to pray for us is a way of maintaining Ml r too angry to pray, we can ask others to lift us up to God and to place us in God’s hands.” ?-*■ . * - mmm that connection with God. If we are able to see our suffering in light of this connection, we might dis cover ways it can transform rather than defeat us. Suffering can make us more sympathetic to the pains of those around us.. It can awaken us to life’s precious nature. If nothing else, suf fering can bring forth tenderness and charity in those around us as they care for our needs. In short, suffering can challenge our spiritual lives tremendously; what we can do is pray for the grace to live through it with love. (Sanders is an assistant professor of theology at Georgetown University.) hen we are too sick oi How the liturgy envisions suffering By Father Lawrence E. Mick Catholic News Service q k-/ome wise person once said that the church’s function is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. That’s also a fair description of what the liturgy does. —If we are too comfortable, our en counter with the Lord in the liturgy calls us to conversion, to moving ahead on our pilgrim journey of faith. —If we are afflicted, the liturgy offers us needed comfort. Suffering is part of the human con dition. All of us carry our own unique burdens, and when we come to liturgy we bring them with us. When it comes to personal suffer ing, the liturgy brings us into contact with the ultimate victim, Jesus Christ. The New Testament letter to the Hebrews says, “Because he him self was tested through what he suf fered, he is able to help those who are being tested” (2:18). Whatever suffering we bring with us, when we meet Christ in the lit urgy we are invited to unite our suf FAITH IN THE MARKETPLACE Tell of a step you took in the face of personal suffering that gave birth to hope. “One Good Friday ... I despondently sat in a small meditation room at a hospital praying for my dad during one of his many hospitalizations over a 23-year period. In my emotional pain, I noticed the space was cramped and that the hospital needed a larger place for people to pray.... I became involved in a project to have the hospital build an interfaith chapel.... And now, a few years later, I am touched to see a beautiful interfaith chapel at that hospital.” — Joann Buhler, Aberdeen, N.J. “We had a problem with my daughter in college, and I depended on prayer. And now I thank God that everything has worked out.” — Karen Holcombe, Palmer, Alaska “There came a time in my life when my ministry wasn’t going well, and I moved on to a new ministry. I spent time in prayer as I made my deci sion.” — Sister Denise Herrmann, CSA, Madison, Wis. An upcoming edition asks: How has the church in your area concretely welcomed or supported new immigrants? If you would like to respond for /possible publication, please write: Faith Alive! 3211 Fourth St. N.E., rvCV Ad Washington, D.C. 20017-1100. fering with his passion and death on the cross. In this way our suffering can be redemptive, as his was. But it is important to remember that Christ’s death was not the end. The liturgy always celebrates both his death and his resurrection. So Christian liturgy closely paral lels our life experience, for we know that suffering is part of life but we also know that life is not ultimately extin guished by suffering. Reminding us that we are not alone is another way the liturgy helps us cope with suffering. When we gather with other Christians to celebrate the liturgy, we form one body in Christ. Both our sufferings and our joys are shared with the other members of the body. This means that our union in Christ enables us to draw strength from one another. We even draw strength from those who have gone before us in faith, especially the mar tyrs who suffered the ultimate price but still remained faithful. Of course, suffering tends to make us focus inward, perhaps even to feel sorry for ourselves. But the liturgy calls us out of our self-centeredness and challenges us to think of others. Just gathering with others helps us move beyond the limits of our own concerns. Then in the liturgy we pray together for the needs of the world; those petitions regularly remind us of people around the world who suffer even more than we do. “Come to me,” Jesus said to heavily burdened people, “and I will refresh you.” In the liturgy he is always wait ing for us. No suffering we endure is greater than his love for us. (Father Mick is a priest of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, Ohio, and a free-lance writer.) In 0 Nutshell “The true message of suffering is a lesson of love. Love makes suffering fruitful, and suffering deepens love,” Pope John Paul II said in his homily at St. Edith Stein’s 1998 canonization. “Often people can go the extra mile for others because they have been spiritually formed through suffering. For Christians, suffering is both hope and challenge,” the U.S. bishops said in a 1995 statement.