Thank you

I was gratified to learn this evening that this blog, denoted in transliterated form as Catholikos Diakonos, has been nominated in several categories of the annual Catholic Blog Awards. The categories for which I am nominated are: Best Blog by Clergy/Religious/Seminarian, Best Written Catholic Blog, Most Informative & Insightful Catholic Blog, and Smartest Catholic Blog. In addition, our CL collaborative blog, Cahiers Peguy: the drama of Christian humanism, was nominated for Best Group Blog.

Without sounding too maudlin, or over-the-top, thank you. I am humbled. It is always nice to be encouraged and to receive validation, especially for an endeavor that truly comes from my soul and which I do not do competitively and could not do without a community.

God's story is good news

I have been pondering the meaning of suffering ever since reading a review of Dr. Sidney Callhan's latest book last Friday. My assertion that suffering has no intrinsic meaning because evil is a parasite has prompted a few very good questions and observations. It seems that the question, which is one that I am pretty sure Callhan addresses in her book- it is certainly addressed by Crysdale and Dr. Williams, among others- after the assertion that evil and suffering have no intrinsic meaning, once we have clarified that God is not a sadist and we are not masochists, is can suffering have meaning? If suffering can and does have meaning, how? Hint: there is no Deus ex machina involved. If suffering is to have meaning it must be appropriated, that is, made sense of by the sufferer. Well, this gets us back to Hauerwas' assertion that "Eschatology indicates that the world, including ourselves, is storied". Michael Spencer (a.k.a. the internetmonk) gives us clarity in the form of wisdom, which is always succinct. In a post entitled Humiliation, Humanity and the Fifth Commandment: Can We Tell The Truth About Those Whose Sin Affects Us?, he writes: "The Gospel is God’s story. The Biblical story is God’s story. The invitation of God is to join our stories with his, and to come to terms with the elements of our own stories in the context of the story that reveals a new world and new people in the image of Jesus Christ."

This is not an unheard of way of making sense of suffering. In fact, both Williams and Crysdale, along with many other Christian writers and theologians, insist that this is the way of making sense of suffering, especially our own. It is not somebody else's job to tell our story, we must find our voice and tell our own story. In this way we become not just admirers of Jesus, but disciples. It is also bears noting that Michael's post is a powerful meditation on how sin is never a private affair, but affects our communion. I find it heartening to be reminded by a Protestant brother that, as Catholics, we need to find a way of reappropriating this truth through our practice of penance as a sacrament, which, for many, has become a dead exercise of reading off our (dirty) laundry list in an ornate box. Hence, something to be avoided. I think this is an area in which a mutual exchange could prove most fruitful.

A bit more on why suffering has no intrinsic value

Descent in to hell

In writing about evil in the context of our Lord's temptations in the desert, Stanley Hauerwas reminds us that "God's love risks our disobedience in the hope that we will freely return the love he has for us. God refuses to coerce us to participate in the love that is the interdependent life of the Trinity". He goes on to discuss the nature of evil, which, as pointed out last Friday, has no intrinsic value. It has no intrinsic value because evil has no intrinsic, that is, independent, existence. It is not too much to say that evil is always parasitical, a perversion.

To make this point, Hauerwas points us to something that St. Augustine wrote on the nature, or the lack of any distinct nature, of evil: "If every being, insofar as it is a being, is good then when we assert that a defective thing is bad, it would seem we are saying that evil is in fact good, for any defect depends on the goodness that is always prior and therefore there is no evil apart from that which is good. In other words, nothing evil exists in itself, but only as an evil aspect of some entity because every actual entity is good [omnia natura bonum est]. Absurd as this sounds, the logical connections of the arguments nevertheless compel us to this inevitability" (Matthew 51).

Picking up more from Hauwerwas, especially on politics, please see Politics: Worship and Sacrifice- making a judgment.

Discipleship: the journey from death to life

Commenting on the third chapter of St. Matthew, theologian Stanley Hauerwas writes: "Jesus is unleashed into the world. His mission will not be easy, for the kingdom inauguarted by his life and death is not one that can be recognized on the world's terms. He is the beloved Son who must undergo the terror produced by our presumption that we are our own creators. He submits to John's baptism just as he will submit to the crucifixion so that we might know how God would rule the world. His journey begins. Matthew would have us follow" (Matthew 49).

from The Sayings of the Desert Fathers

On this Laetare Sunday, which marks the half-way point of this Lent, Pater Tom reminded me of the time when Abba Pambo went to Abba Joseph and said to him, "Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?" Abba Joseph, who was an old man at the time, "stood up and stretched his hands toward heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire" and he replied to Abba Pambo: "If you will, you can become all flame." I was left thinking, "Why not? After all, our God is a consuming fire" (Heb. 12,29). I also thought that it was all Abba Pambo's hedging, "as far as I can;" "a little", etc. that roused both old man's and God's ire. I am also reminded of Abba Anthony Bloom when he tells us that God is not a tame kitten, but a roaring lion. Check your timidity, your as far as I cans, and your a littles at the door of the lion's den, on the perimeter of the all-consuming fire, at that point at which you hear the inviting roar or begin to feel your skin get hot and begin to smell your hair burning. Caritas, God's love, is fierce! Abba, or, Abuna (a.k.a. Aboona) is the Eastern term, from Aramaic and Arabic, for father. In the Eastern Christian tradition holy orders is not the arbiter of being an Abba, but advancement in the spiritual life.



See also Exodus 3,2-15

Some thoughts on suffering and pain

Fred asks:

"Dcn Scott,

It may be helpful to define and distinguish pain and suffering. Pain is a defense of the body. Thus, the pain of a burn warns me to take my hand off of the stove. Someone who lacks the capacity for pain, for example with leprosy, must compensate with persistent vigilance.

The Buddhists are right that suffering comes from desire. The question is whether our desire for the ideal is true or deluded.

What do you think?"

In the first instance, I think your distinction is a most useful one because it brings some clarity to my previous post, which was a response to another question. I can certainly accept your definition of pain. In viewing the question from this angle, I think it necessary to also observe that pain and suffering have a causal nexus and that this nexus has inverse properties: pain causing suffering and suffering causing pain. There is being hungry and then there is suffering from hunger. A starving person is in physical pain for want of food. It is also true that s/he also suffers from hunger, not only for the need for food now as a matter of immediate survival, but for food security in the future.

Taking the Buddhistic route, insofar as I understand it, as I claim no expertise and have no wish to make a caricature of what others believe: if to live is suffer, to live is also to feel pain. To back-up just a bit, pain, at least as we have defined it, can be said to have (roughly) two causes: external (injury/hunger/disease) and internal (desire/angst). One answer to the problem of pain is Freudian: avoid pain and maximize pleasure. When exalted to being the governing principle of life, this makes a mockery of do good and avoid what is evil. Because, in certain circumstances, in both doing good and avoiding evil we suffer pain, the martyrs show us that living this principle for the sake of love can even be lethal. On my understanding, for the Buddhist, it is not a question of whether our desire is deluded because desire is to be overcome to point of the very annihilation of self. Again, as with the pain/pleasure principle, nothing could be more foreign to a Christian understanding of the role of suffering and/or pain. The goal of overcoming all desire strikes me as a rather inhuman response to human existence. For example, mon cher ami Camus' metaphysical revolt against human limitation is a very human, if not yet Christian, response to man's existential angst.

I also think you are correct in that the real question is whether or not we are clear about what we desire, with desire being a given and God-given, that is, a necessary part of being human, as well as a source of suffering. Desire is not only a source of suffering when misdirected, but even when accurately understood and properly directed. For us celini, we speak of the origin of the Movement as our dear Don Gius' being wounded by beauty when he was very young. Even in all this suffering, though unavoidable, still has no intrinsic value. Put simply, suffering, in order to have value, must be redeemed and understood in light of redemption. In this way suffering is not only soteriologically, but also dialectically, redeemed from the void. What is not God is brought by Christ into the very life of God, who brings life from death.

For me, when I become at least somewhat clear about what I desire, both its source and fulfillment, who, it turns out, is one and the same, by experientially encountering the One who reveals to me my desire precisely by showing me its, which is actually my, fulfillment, I also discover the truth about the human person. In a homily he gave in Munich, the Holy Father said: "Jesus wants to share with us his seeing God, his hearing the Father and his converse with him. The path upon which we set out at Baptism is meant to be a process of increasing development, by which we grow in the life of communion with God, and acquire a different way of looking at man and creation."

This realization, then, is liberation, which is brought about, sustained, and seeks an ever expanding communion, both in terms of depth and scope. This why, the Holy Father reminds us in this same homily that "[w]e impose our faith on no one. Such proselytism is contrary to Christianity. Faith can develop only in freedom. But we do appeal to the freedom of men and women to open their hearts to God, to seek him, to hear his voice". We do this confident in the truth expressed by the title of a hymn: Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring, which goes,

Jesu, joy of man's desiring,
Holy Wisdom, Love most bright;
Drawn by Thee, our souls, aspiring,
Soar to uncreated light.
Word of God, our flesh that fashion'd,
With the fire of life impassion'd,
Striving still to truth unknown,
Soaring, dying, round Thy throne.

Through the way where hope is guiding,
Hark, what peaceful music rings!
Where the flock, in Thee confiding,
Drink of joy from deathless springs.
Theirs is beauty's fairest pleasure;
Theirs is wisdom's holiest treasure.
Thou dost ever lead Thine own
In the love of joys unknown.

Now, lest this all remain in the abstract, at the level of theory, or in the realm of navel gazing, there is still a vast terrain that we must negotiate between what we discuss in a context like this and the magnitude of suffering in the world. This vast terrain is what I made a very limited effort to address in my original post, prompted by Loxterkamp's review of Callahan's book, which I fully intend to read. There is a post from last summer in which I also dealt with this question: To love is to suffer, or passion=desire.

I presume the indulgence of being granted a personal aside due the fact that this humble blog is nothing if not a long, running (or even long running) personal aside. I have been able to include in these two posts two people, Albert Camus and Madeleine Delbrêl, about whom I find it très difficile to write. I find it hard because of their effect on my thinking and action, as well as their affect on me. Suffice it to say that my community of the heart has a large francophone contingent. I have hanging on this blog the draft of a post on dear Madeleine, which I began in August 2006, but her picture will suffice for now. For those who are completely unfamiliar with Delbrêl, the most ready-at-hand comparison is with Dorothy Day. A good introduction to her life and work is a book, We, the Ordinary People of the Streets, published by Eerdmans in 2000. Though out-of-print, there are used copies in circulation.

A few more thoughts on suffering

With yesterday, we have leapt over leap year in a single bound and with a little help from the Velvet Underground and Cowboy Junkies. The problem of suffering, which is really not a problem, but a reality, is worth re-visiting. By stating boldly that there is nothing intrinsically good about suffering, the word intrinsically bears a lot of weight. To wit: suffering is not a good in and of itself. It is quite the opposite. Sticking with Loxterkamp's paraphrase of Rahner, suffering is a void, with a negative definition, what is not God. This seems theologically non-controversial; it is quintessentially Augustinian. We never revel in suffering, or in causing others to suffer. We are not sadomasochists, which would constitute an utter perversion. God does not hurt us to help us. We do not hurt each other to help each other, we do not give or receive pain for the purpose of pleasure. Nothing I can think of would be more devilish.

With all that, pain and suffering of the worst kinds are real. In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul writes, in what can only be characterized as a very dense and difficult passage: "In the same way, the Spirit too comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit itself intercedes with inexpressible groanings. And the one who searches hearts knows what is the intention of the Spirit, because it intercedes for the holy ones according to God's will. We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. For those he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, so that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined he also called; and those he called he also justified; and those he justified he also glorified" (Rom 8,26-30-underlining and emboldening mine). Without getting into the whole issue of predestination (I tend to take the Barthian stance of universal election, at least as filtered through von Balthasar). It bears noting that a better translation of verse twenty-eight is: "all things intermingle for good for those who love God". The Revised Standard Version probably renders this verse best: "We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose." In other words, God goes about the work of bringing life from death and hope from despair, making prime rib out of a bucket of s***. God can certainly make something of nothing. After all, God created the world ex nihilio. If suffering were a positive good, then God would not only permit it, but actively cause it.

Therefore, it is important to understand that God is not in any way the cause of evil or suffering. Death, pain, evil, suffering, natural disasters, etc. result from a fallen world that it still in the process of being redeemed. Earlier in this same chapter the apostle writes: "For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience" (Rom 8,19-25 NRSV). Hence, it becomes the mission of the children of God to cooperate in the world's redemption through the specific manner in which we are called, be it as cloistered contemplative interceding for the world, or a person on the front-lines of dealing with the scourge of AIDS, or working with people in recovery from debilitating addictions, etc. All of this is diakonia, which, along with leitourgia and kerygma-martyria, expresses the Church's "deepest nature" (Deus Caritas Est par. 25).

Madeleine Delbrêl

We still must tread lightly and be aware that when we insistently assert this truth (i.e., that God can and does make all things intermingle for our good) we often fail to take into account the magnitude of suffering that many people experience. In other words, this assertion can and often does comes across as glib and is usually the luxury of the fortunate, of those of us for whom suffering constitutes but a minor annoyance. The key, as with the moral life, is bringing the understanding of God's love in whatever way we can, by serving and standing in solidarity with the anawim, Jesus' beloved little ones, who are nothing in the eyes of the world, but are precious to God. This is complicated because "[n]o one has ever seen God" (1 Jn 4,12; Jn 1,18). "Yet, if we love one another, God remains in us, and his love is brought to perfection in us" (1 Jn 4,12). In other words, it is incumbent upon us, God's daughters and sons by virtue of our baptism, to make God visible by our love, which is the concrete way others experience God's love. "We love because he first loved us" (1 Jn 4,19).

We are not passive by-standers in the intermingling that brings about good and that creates something from nothing. We are God's co-workers in the redemption of the world, rejoicing, like St. Paul, in our suffering, which we do not seek or cause and for which we do not blame God, but accept as the consequence of living in a broken world, for the sake of others, "filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church" (Col 1,24-27).