Viktor Frankl (1905 - 1997) a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust and a respected psychiatrist, offered guidance, from his own experience in a concentration camp, for those who suffer. In his Foreward to Frankl's book "Man's Search for Meaning," Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote:
"The greatest task for any person is to find meaning in his or her life. Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times. Suffering in and of itself is meaningless; we give our suffering meaning by the way in which we respond to it. . . .
"Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to you in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you."
I thought about that today: how am I responding to the forces beyond my control that seem to dominate my life and make my soul a battlefield? In my thoughts and emotions, I am constantly replaying the battles and suffering going on in my world, my country, my Church, my personal life, battles which are beyond my personal control. How can I control what I feel and do about what is happening? How can I bring meaning out of this suffering?
First, regardless of how I feel when I suffer, the truth is that God is Real and God is the Truth. God is our Meaning-Maker. Through the inspiration of God's Spirit, I can find meaning in my life in my work, in loving caring for others, and in courage during difficult times.
One way I find meaning in the suffering is to do the significant work of always searching for the truth about what is happening.
I'm overwhelmed by my anger over the ongoing battle between our political leaders over the poor refugees who want to enter here. Current national rhetoric calls Latin American refugees enemy invaders and a criminal threat, in effect, de-humanizes them. But here are some significant truths: in 1948, in the aftermath of World War II, our country allowed more than half a million European refugees to seek a new life here, and in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, hundreds of thousands from Vietnam and elsewhere in Indochina were resettled here.
This coming year, we will only allow 30,000 refugees to resettle in the U.S., a policy completely at odds with our national pledge to be a refuge "for your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." My heart breaks for all these poor men, women, and children fleeing poverty and violence, who travel together as a protection against robbers. Many of them will be murdered or die of famine if they are forced to return to their countries of origin.
Another significant truth: "America" magazine's editor says (in its October 15, 2018 issue) " It is also worth noting that a 2017 report from the Department of Health and Human Services estimated that between the years of 2005 and 2014, refugees had contributed more than $269 billion n federal, state, and local taxes - far more then they received in government assistance."
I'm torn apart with anger and grief over the ongoing verbal battle in our Diocese about whether our Bishop should resign for alleged incompetence in his handling of priests accused of sexual abuse and priests accused of sexual misconduct. Our people are splintered - even families - over this. And we're all angered, disillusioned, by accusations against priests we've known and loved for years, talented, compassionate priests.... and pounded by a Press which believes that people are not innocent until proven guilty, but guilty until proven innocent. Careers, vocations are being ruined. Yet the most important truth is that children and adults have been sexually abused and need our support.
Here's another significant truth: people's consciences are formed by life experiences, and so every Catholic in our Diocese is going to come to a different opinion about what our Bishop should do, or have done to him - and we should respect each other's opinions. Here's another truth: far, far more priests are not sex abusers than are.
I'm also offended by the latest statements of one church leader who blames the priestly sex abuse crisis on "the scourge of homosexuality."
Dr. Gene Abel, a researcher in the field of sexual violence for over twenty-five years, wrote an article for the average parent in Redbook magazine to take the knowledge he gained in doing over 100 scientific articles to provide specific warning signs for parents and caregivers. In this article, he explicitly states that most cases of boys being molested are attributed to heterosexuals:
"…[M]ost men who molest little boys are not gay. Only 21 percent of the child molesters we studied who assault little boys were exclusively homosexual. Nearly 80 percent of the men who molested little boys were heterosexual or bisexual and most of these men were married and had children of their own."
There have always been gay priests; you've undoubtedly known some and been blessed by their ministry. We need to distinguish between, as the Church describes it, homosexual orientation and homosexual activity. Our sexual "orientation" is our predominant sexual attraction to one sex, or in the case of bisexuals, both sexes. Our "activity" is our sexual acts. The Catholic Church accepts our sexual orientations as a "given," not a choice, but classifies "homosexual sexual activity" as sinful because homosexual acts close the sexual act to the gift of life.
We have to take this passage in the Catechism (2358) (quoted in part) very seriously:
"The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. THEY DO NOT CHOOSE THEIR HOMOSEXUAL CONDITION....THEY MUST BE ACCEPTED WITH RESPECT, COMPASSION, AND SENSITIVITY. EVERY SIGN OF UNJUST DISCRIMINATION IN THEIR REGARD MUST BE AVOIDED."
In other words, gay, lesbian, and bi-sexual persons do not CHOOSE their sexual orientation, and they must never be considered a "scourge" on the Church or society. We need, in every case, to look at the "whole" person, not get fixated on his/her orientation - and treat him/her not only with respect, but with welcome, as someone with precious gifts.
I'm torn apart by the massive denial about the reality of climate change. "The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) doesn’t mince words: if we don’t take immediate action to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, the cost will be staggering. Hundreds of millions of human lives. Trillions of dollars. The effects will reach every facet of civilization, with the most vulnerable bearing the greatest toll.
"This bad news came on the heels of a bitter, emotionally charged battle over a Supreme Court seat, at a time in which U.S. partisan divides are already the strongest in recorded history. Those divides are encouraged and exploited by politicians and corporations seeking to benefit from discord and a lack of bipartisan leadership. Meanwhile, our planet doesn’t care if we’re conservative or liberal. Earth continues to warm as a result of our actions and, by doing so, it reshapes the rules of the game for us all. On this, the science is absolutely clear.
"For a long time, climate change seemed like a distant issue. It was polar bears in a faraway Arctic. It was a problem of the future, certain to be solved by technological innovations.
"The IPCC’s latest report must shake us out of that complacency: in the time it takes for a child in kindergarten today to graduate high school, the future will be here." (from the Scientific American blog.)
Here's a significant truth: to abuse or misuse our water, air, soil, animals, plants, sea life, etc. is SINFUL.
And I'm torn apart, and angry, and grieving, over the continued physical, mental, and developmental disabilities and illnesses in our family, the continued financial problems, our worries about the future when my husband and I will die and who will pick up our unique ministry of being the Glue, the Support System, the Safety Net?
Sometimes in my suffering over my family, I feel as if God is absent, if God even exists. But, I have faith that God exists. I have hope that God is constantly at work in my family, healing us in gentle, sometimes hidden, always patient ways. When I feel dry and used up, God floods me again with love so that I can continue to love my family and give to them and receive from them.
And here's a significant truth: always, always, I can find signs of God's living, healing love in our family as God visits us with quiet miracles. An autistic grand-child who hasn't spoken in fourteen months suddenly begins to speak again and his parents melt and tear up as he says "I love you." A sister who was told that she has a serious condition is told by two other Doctors that she does not have it. A grand-child with psychiatric illness is stabilized by medicine after several hospitalizations. In the midst of our tears, there is also rejoicing.
Life's meaning may seem to be totally annihilated by violence: one battle after another, in a world constantly at war, battles between politicians, battles between races and religions, battles between Church leaders, battles between other friends' family members, battles to stay emotionally afloat in a sea of sickness and dysfunction. But here's another significant truth: God always visits us - families, churches, synagogues, temples, nations - and blesses us with love and courage to find a way to make meaning out of our suffering.
Here we can identify with Holocaust victim Etty Hillesum (1914–1943), a young Jewish woman who died at Auschwitz, who shared an intimate glimpse into her own experience through her journals. Etty came from a deeply disturbed family. Through psychotherapy and prayer she became a whole person, able to reject hatred even when she and her whole Jewish people were persecuted and killed. She calmly helped take care of others in their physical and spiritual needs, even when her world was falling apart.
"June 14, 1941: More arrests, more terror, concentration camps, the arbitrary dragging off of fathers, sisters, brothers. We seek the meaning of life, wondering whether any meaning can be left. But that is something each one of us must settle with himself and with God. And perhaps life has its own meaning, even if it takes a lifetime to find it. . . .
"June 15, 1941: For a moment yesterday I thought I couldn’t go on living, that I needed help. Life and suffering had lost their meaning for me; I felt I was about to collapse under a tremendous weight. . . . I said that I confronted the 'suffering of mankind' . . . but that was not really what it was. Rather I feel like a small battlefield, in which the problems, or some of the problems, of our time are being fought out. All one can hope to do is to keep oneself humbly available, to allow oneself to be a battlefield." (from "An Interrupted Life.")
There are an awful lot of people who run away from reality. Who stay bound up in their own problems, or choose to believe what they want to believe which is often the easiest, most simplistic thing to believe, or habitually lose themselves in fun, in food, in pot, in sex, in electronics, or who don't speak out the Truth even when it screams in their hearts to be spoken! There are people who run away from faith, from hope, from love, and instead lose themselves in bitterness, in a numbness which absolves them from having to engage with life, with Reality.
This is what we each have the freedom to choose between: running away or making ourselves humbly available to God as His small battlefield. Do I have the courage to allow myself, in love, to be a small battlefield? To not run away from all the heart-piercing anger and grief smoldering in me over my country, my church, my personal life, but instead to hold my thoughts, emotions, and actions up as an offering, sacred gifts to God in solidarity with the ongoing suffering of Jesus? Is this meant to be the great meaning of my life - to be a small battlefield? Does God deliver me, not necessarily by removing my suffering (although often He does heal!) but by revealing to me that my suffering can have meaning and value?
When God feels absent, my heart runs to the One Who is with me always: Jesus the Good Teacher, the only truly Good Teacher, who will never abandon me.....the One Who calls me to be a disciple, to have a radical dependence on him because he is God, he alone is truly Good. I can only be a small battlefield, living in solidarity with the suffering Jesus, if I give up my self-sufficiency and give my heart to him.
No matter where we live, no matter the conditions of our lives, we can choose to give meaning to our suffering. We can choose to offer everything we suffer to the Father, united to the crucified Jesus, in the power of their Holy Spirit, to help co-create the world. We can do our best, day by day, to always search for the truth, for significant facts; to love God present in every human being we meet; to reverence God present in all of creation - with courage. Even though our lives are small, we can choose to have hearts enlarged enough to hold the world and all its battlefields inside us, to pray over, mourn over, act FOR, and rejoice over its quiet, daily, God-given miracles.
Jesus is challenging us to be "either cold or hot." Can we become "hot," on fire with the Holy Spirit of courage and love? Can we remember, " Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses it (for my sake) will save it." (Luke 17:33.)
St. Oscar Romero, mowed down as he celebrated Mass because he dared to confront his corrupt government through radio broadcasts, gives us a word of encouragement and challenge:
“We have never preached violence, except the violence of love, which left Christ nailed to a cross, the violence that we must each do to ourselves to overcome our selfishness and such cruel inequalities among us. The violence we preach is not the violence of the sword, the violence of hatred. It is the violence of love, of brotherhood, the violence that wills to beat weapons into sickles for work.”