Isn't it amazing how, when we're in pain, the life we had before, the things we did so easily, seem a lifetime away? A mirage? How now life seems an endless series of new, endless adjustments?
Because the pain continues. Ice. Heat. Sit. Stretch. Hobble from this piece of furniture to the next. Clean and shop in the hours that are relatively pain-free. Make another appointment with my chiropractor. View reality through a fog of meds and pain. These are my days and nights right now. Sometimes I get so depressed, wondering if the pain will ever end. And then I think about all the people who live with physical pain that will never end, pain that requires constant medicine and techniques meant to help people cope with ongoing, endless pain.
Pain comes in many forms. Physical pain. The emotional pain of griefs that never really end. The pain of alienations and separations and thankless tasks performed over and over again. The spiritual pain of doubts and temptations.
How can we find peace in the midst of pain?
What helps me is the realization that Peace isn't a concept. The idea that Peace exists isn't a Placebo. Peace is a Person: Jesus the Christ.
Jesus is our Peace in our Pain because as our Resurrected Lord He shows us His wounds lovingly suffered for us and reassures us that, if we are united to him in prayer, all our pain will have meaning and purpose. Wendy M. Wright says (in a poem I read on retreat) that Jesus' marks - His wounds - have to be still visible on the Resurrected Christ because they are signs of His real, physical love for us. If they weren't still visible,
It would mean
he had merely passed through,
Not born the true weight
of love.
They have to be there
Like a woman's body
bears the marks of childbirth.
I learned, on retreat, that many women mystics have compared Jesus' death on the cross to women's work of labor and childbirth; Jesus' pain gave birth to us who can now enter eternal life!
Daily, Jesus calls to us to trust Him, to trust that if we too bear our sufferings in love we can enter more fully into the life - and grace and hope and peace - of the One who loved us to death - and new life. Our pain can also birth new life in others in mysterious ways. When we suffer in love and for others, people can see the reality of the Gospel message of sacrificial love alive in us, birthing a new deeper understanding of love in them.
- The mother or father who works an extra job.
- The grandmother who has a waitress job and also babysits her grandchildren.
- The teen who, because of an accident, uses crutches or a wheelchair.
People watch. They see who we are, how we are handling suffering. They learn from our quiet words and deeds. They grow.
Our suffering that we unite with Jesus' suffering is simply the daily ordinary aches, pains, depressions, inconveniences, responsibilities, griefs, and stresses of ordinary life. We don't have to do anything "extra" to be holy, to influence others' lives. Life brings us all enough suffering!
When we willingly and deliberately intend to join our sufferings to Jesus' sufferings, we participate with Him in what is called in Jewish tradition "tikkun olam, the repair of the world." As the great theologian Karl Rahner says "We have consciousness, virtue, and inventiveness so we can mend the world that shadow forces attempt to demolish. This is how we, as co-creators, continue what God has begun." We continue to love, even in pain and darkness, and God's re-creation of His world can continue through, with, and in us.
Jesus is the Peace Who reconciles, who brings opposites together in harmony and unity. Sometimes the pain we feel is a suffering because of arguments with a husband or wife. I wrote a sacred song once, called "Ephesians," which has been used at weddings, in which I refer to the pain of misunderstandings that can afflict married couples. In the verses I speak as the couple speaking to each other, "It is He who is our Peace, who makes the two of us one, breaking down the barriers that keep us apart, making us one in Him."
The Sacred Heart of Jesus, wounded for us, is a visible reminder of Jesus Who spared nothing, including His own flesh, to become one with us and make us one in Him. He is Peace Incarnate, the Peace who reminds us that we can take everything that we do and everything that happens to us and in prayer unite it all to His life.
And if we do this daily, He can transfigure our lives, transform our sufferings, into love that births more love, love that gives life to others. People will see the Peace of Christ in us, no matter what we're suffering, and gain hope and peace for themselves. What can be more peaceful than knowing that day by day, in the peaks and dark valleys of our ordinary lives, we can choose to be co-creators with Christ, helping Him to repair our world!