An 18th Sunday after Pentecost Thought to Start the Week Off Righ
After last week's focus on the role of suffering in our lives, The Inner Life of the Soul narrows the discussion to what might be called "spiritual" suffering. Taking it's lead from Jesus cure of the paralytic, today's entry uses bodily suffering to help us better understand spiritual suffering:
"The diseases of the body and the ills of our mortal frame prove, upon reflection, to be types of the trials and troubles of our spiritual life. We talk of blindness, deafness, fever, debility, paralysis; but how often do the eyes of man's soul seem actually blind to the still small voice of the Holy Spirit; how often a fever of ambition for gain or power lays hold of him; how weak he becomes in the daily struggle between good and evil! So true is this, that we speak in common parlance of the soul's diseases; we call the priest the soul's physician; and one of the seven Sacraments is peculiarly the Sacrament of healing, wherein we lay bare our spiritual maladies and wounds before one who is trained to use spiritual probe and scalpel, to apply spiritual salve and balm, and to do what no doctor of the body has power to do with the lifeless clay, - restore life to the dead soul with these mighty words: 'Ego absolvo te' - 'I absolve thee!'"
We are reminded of our fallen human nature. We are all sinners. This explains why we're urged - really commanded - not to judge others. How tempting it can be to judge not only when we observe the weaknesses and failings of others, but their outright bad behavior towards us or someone we care about. Even then, while we may naturally judge such behavior, we're called not to judge the person.
It's not an easy thing to do - at least it has never been for me.
As Our Lord taught us not to be concerned so much with the speck in someone's else's eye when there's a beam in our own. We can never be reminded enough: We're all sinners so don't judge others.
But spiritual suffering doesn't stop with sin. Perhaps even more suffering comes to us in the form of crosses:
"...we must remember the soul's diseases are by no means always sins. Very frequently they are crosses like any other cross, means of purification, of sanctification, even of illumination. In their severest form, they are perhaps the very heaviest trial that can be inflicted upon man..."
It will help us not to judge others when we remember that just we are all sinners, so too do all of us bear crosses throughout our lives. We're likely aware of the crosses we bear; but do we try to see those of others? Even within our own families, do we try to see the crosses that surround us being borne by our loved ones?
Recall here the Stations of the Cross. Our Lord fell three times. Each time He got up. If you've never tried to imagine the immense effort it must have taken to get up under the Cross, in his severely weakened state, do so. (If you've never performed this pious act and have trouble doing it now, you might try to look at Our Lord carrying His Cross to Calvary as depicted in the movie, The Passion of the Christ. You can find ample clips on Youtube.)
Our Lord's example teaches us to not only bear our crosses, but to get up again and again each time we fall - whether it's a slip into despondency because persistent suffering has discouraged us in some way, or a fall from grace due to repeated sins we just can't seem to shake. As always, we follow our Leader. Just remember that following Christ in our suffering isn't the end of the story. Doing so, we will inevitably, by God's grace, follow Him to His - and our - Resurrection from the dead.
The Inner Life of the Soul today zeros in on what can be the worst spiritual suffering of all. It comes to us when we faithfully trust in God, pray unceasingly in the face of our trials, but can't find any encouragement. It's as if God has become deaf to us. On and on we go with our prayers and petitions, but the spiritual air surrounding us seems dead. Many saints have gone through this trial of trials, famously characterized by St. John of the Cross as the "Dark Night of the Soul." The Inner Life of the Soul calls it "spiritual paralysis" and further explains:
"Many of us have experienced spiritual paralysis in one degree or another, and found it very hard to bear, a source of keen mortification as well as of pain. The way grows dark before us, we cannot tell how to walk or where to go, and we think that even if we saw, we could not or would not move...Advice is given us, and we forget it; help is offered us, and we have no strength to use it; the experience of others never seems to fit our case exactly, and the ability fails to express our sufferings so that another can understand...
"...Poor soul! In these dark and dreadful days, that lengthen out, God knows, into darker nights, an on into years full of dread, what shall you do?"
After her death, it was revealed that Mother Theresa suffered thusly for many, many years. After her initial experience of being called to serve the poorest of the poor, she continue in her work for decades, until she died at a ripe old age. It seems that most of the time, in spite of her public example of deep faith, her interior life was one of great spiritual suffering. I thought of her from time to time after the sickness and death of our son this year.
Spiritual suffering, in whatever form it comes to us, for however long it lingers, calls on every last drop of our faith. The Inner Life of the Soul offers this prayer to us in the midst of our suffering:
"Say to God: 'I am nothing, and worse than nothing; I seem to myself all misery and sin. Yet will I never let Thee go. My will is dead; but with this frozen heart I force my tongue at least to say: I give myself to Thee. In Thine own time, Thine own way, Thine infinite mercy, have pity at last and save.' So praying, and patiently waiting , thy God will surely give to thee, hoping against hope, eternal peace."
Perhaps Mother Theresa prayed something similar to this in her spiritual darkness, as the years dragged on, Understanding the words of this prayer, and knowing that saints have undergone such paralysis and suffering, we might draw some consolation in the midst of our own dark night. While not offering immediate relief, it does ultimately offer eternal peace.
"The diseases of the body and the ills of our mortal frame prove, upon reflection, to be types of the trials and troubles of our spiritual life. We talk of blindness, deafness, fever, debility, paralysis; but how often do the eyes of man's soul seem actually blind to the still small voice of the Holy Spirit; how often a fever of ambition for gain or power lays hold of him; how weak he becomes in the daily struggle between good and evil! So true is this, that we speak in common parlance of the soul's diseases; we call the priest the soul's physician; and one of the seven Sacraments is peculiarly the Sacrament of healing, wherein we lay bare our spiritual maladies and wounds before one who is trained to use spiritual probe and scalpel, to apply spiritual salve and balm, and to do what no doctor of the body has power to do with the lifeless clay, - restore life to the dead soul with these mighty words: 'Ego absolvo te' - 'I absolve thee!'"
We are reminded of our fallen human nature. We are all sinners. This explains why we're urged - really commanded - not to judge others. How tempting it can be to judge not only when we observe the weaknesses and failings of others, but their outright bad behavior towards us or someone we care about. Even then, while we may naturally judge such behavior, we're called not to judge the person.
It's not an easy thing to do - at least it has never been for me.
As Our Lord taught us not to be concerned so much with the speck in someone's else's eye when there's a beam in our own. We can never be reminded enough: We're all sinners so don't judge others.
But spiritual suffering doesn't stop with sin. Perhaps even more suffering comes to us in the form of crosses:
"...we must remember the soul's diseases are by no means always sins. Very frequently they are crosses like any other cross, means of purification, of sanctification, even of illumination. In their severest form, they are perhaps the very heaviest trial that can be inflicted upon man..."
It will help us not to judge others when we remember that just we are all sinners, so too do all of us bear crosses throughout our lives. We're likely aware of the crosses we bear; but do we try to see those of others? Even within our own families, do we try to see the crosses that surround us being borne by our loved ones?
Recall here the Stations of the Cross. Our Lord fell three times. Each time He got up. If you've never tried to imagine the immense effort it must have taken to get up under the Cross, in his severely weakened state, do so. (If you've never performed this pious act and have trouble doing it now, you might try to look at Our Lord carrying His Cross to Calvary as depicted in the movie, The Passion of the Christ. You can find ample clips on Youtube.)
Our Lord's example teaches us to not only bear our crosses, but to get up again and again each time we fall - whether it's a slip into despondency because persistent suffering has discouraged us in some way, or a fall from grace due to repeated sins we just can't seem to shake. As always, we follow our Leader. Just remember that following Christ in our suffering isn't the end of the story. Doing so, we will inevitably, by God's grace, follow Him to His - and our - Resurrection from the dead.
The Inner Life of the Soul today zeros in on what can be the worst spiritual suffering of all. It comes to us when we faithfully trust in God, pray unceasingly in the face of our trials, but can't find any encouragement. It's as if God has become deaf to us. On and on we go with our prayers and petitions, but the spiritual air surrounding us seems dead. Many saints have gone through this trial of trials, famously characterized by St. John of the Cross as the "Dark Night of the Soul." The Inner Life of the Soul calls it "spiritual paralysis" and further explains:
"Many of us have experienced spiritual paralysis in one degree or another, and found it very hard to bear, a source of keen mortification as well as of pain. The way grows dark before us, we cannot tell how to walk or where to go, and we think that even if we saw, we could not or would not move...Advice is given us, and we forget it; help is offered us, and we have no strength to use it; the experience of others never seems to fit our case exactly, and the ability fails to express our sufferings so that another can understand...
"...Poor soul! In these dark and dreadful days, that lengthen out, God knows, into darker nights, an on into years full of dread, what shall you do?"
After her death, it was revealed that Mother Theresa suffered thusly for many, many years. After her initial experience of being called to serve the poorest of the poor, she continue in her work for decades, until she died at a ripe old age. It seems that most of the time, in spite of her public example of deep faith, her interior life was one of great spiritual suffering. I thought of her from time to time after the sickness and death of our son this year.
Spiritual suffering, in whatever form it comes to us, for however long it lingers, calls on every last drop of our faith. The Inner Life of the Soul offers this prayer to us in the midst of our suffering:
"Say to God: 'I am nothing, and worse than nothing; I seem to myself all misery and sin. Yet will I never let Thee go. My will is dead; but with this frozen heart I force my tongue at least to say: I give myself to Thee. In Thine own time, Thine own way, Thine infinite mercy, have pity at last and save.' So praying, and patiently waiting , thy God will surely give to thee, hoping against hope, eternal peace."
Perhaps Mother Theresa prayed something similar to this in her spiritual darkness, as the years dragged on, Understanding the words of this prayer, and knowing that saints have undergone such paralysis and suffering, we might draw some consolation in the midst of our own dark night. While not offering immediate relief, it does ultimately offer eternal peace.
Happy Sunday!
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