Dying to Live: A Response to the Mystery of Human Suffering

Part IV - A Contemporary Christian Response to a Suffering World

Editors Note

As we present the last section of this study on human suffering, we are again grateful to Sr. Elise Saggau for permitting us to use this edited version of her paper. This section focuses on the role of the minister. Everyone, in some way or other, is a minister so we believe that this section will be a source of hope and energy for all our readers. In this section Sr. Elise builds on the previous chapters. The contemporary experience of human suffering, the Old Testament view of suffering, the life-lived-for-others of Jesus, the Church's response, all coalesce and provide direction both for those ministering and those being ministered to. As Sr. Elise points out, these roles are constantly being reversed. We might say that we reach the epitome when these roles are in dynamic equilibrium, when both minister and suffering person participate equally in each role.

Introduction

The reality of suffering confronts the contemporary human community with insistent and urgent challenges. These challenges test our ability to grasp the very meaning of our existence. For those of us who profess a religious faith, these challenges force us to seek some kinds of answers in our religious tradition. Whether these answers are uttered in sober philosophical or theological formulas, simply reflected on in the depths of the heart of the Christian community, or prayed about and celebrated in liturgical expression, the test of the authenticity of any response to human challenges is at the level of ministry. What do Christians do as a result of their professed belief in Jesus Christ and in his revelation of God and the meaning of salvation. And how do they do it?

The mission of the Church is to proclaim in word and in deed the salvific presence of God in the world. This proclamation is lived out in the Church's mission by its willingness to cross over, after the example of Jesus, to the world of the other. If we understand the nature of our God as one who totally embraces creation in an irrevocable act of loving self-surrender, we are impelled as Christians to participate in that same loving act towards that same world. Participating in the Church's mission is the acting out of that faith by which we see the world through God's eyes and feel the pain of the world in God's heart.

Solidarity with the Suffering

It seems to be a phenomenon of life that we tend to experience a deep revulsion against those who are afflicted. In the face of the suffering of others, our own innate tendencies towards self-defense, our deep-seated fear of our own suffering and mortality, are unconsciously aroused. Simone Weil, in a blunt description of this cruel inclination, asserts: "If a hen is hurt, the others rush upon it, attacking it with their beaks. Everybody...despises the afflicted to some extent, although practically no one is conscious of it."1 Henri Nowen says, "We are always tempted to keep a safe distance from those who suffer."2 Though armed with good will and enabled by grace, the minister undertakes service with all the obstacles that burden any other person. Simone Weil describes this challenge when she says, "Compassion for the afflicted is an impossibility. When it is really found we have a...miracle..."3 And it is found. We may call it "miracle" because it is one of the most effective signs that God's life is taking place in our midst. Where it is actualized in human lives one recognizes that some reality greater than the human is at work, drawing persons beyond themselves. Yet, it is recognized that without the human "yes," this breaking through is impossible. Again we meet the converging mysteries of divine gratuity and human freedom.

What is required for effective Christian ministry is solidarity with those who suffer. This is not some kind of artificial attempt to share the life of suffering persons, but rather it is a movement into the depth of one's own life. It is that depth of self-knowledge which recognizes that no one's suffering is separable from one's own life-experience; that recognizes the deep connectedness which bonds every single human life to every other human life. It is the awareness that every kind of alienation is inhuman. It is the deeply communitarian experience that moves the Church-as-community to create community at every level of existence. The Christian minister is one who, within the context of a Church which values bondedness, is in the process of accepting fully her/his own suffering existence, who sees this existence as connected with that of every other person, and who is willing to learn from life the meaning of life so that this can be shared with others. There are no "experts" who can tell another the meaning of his/her suffering. "It is only by passing in and through the actual experience of suffering that we have access to any meaning that it may entail. After doing this we may share our discoveries with one another."4

The Christian minister, then, is "authorized" to serve the community to the extent that she/he has entered fully into her/his own human experience and been willing to surrender those walls of self-defense that keep her/him from access to the depths of this experience.

Ministers who imagine that ministry to the suffering can be conducted from "behind a wall" are mistaken. Because of the deeply rooted desire to avoid suffering, the chief temptation of ministers is to view their effectiveness in terms of their own ability to stand apart from those who suffer. Those who minister to the sick see the effectiveness of that service depending on their own health. Those who minister to the dying see themselves as clearly on the side of the living. Those who minister to the poor feel more effective when coming out of an experience of some affluence. Those who serve the despairing and hopeless picture themselves as full of hope. Those who preach the gospel of Jesus Christ are tempted to believe that they possess and understand with some clarity the good news which they want to pass on to others. Even granting the health, education and social or economic security of the ministers, the mistake is to believe that this "status" which they enjoy is the basis for their ministry. It is only with the realization that these privileges are accidental and may even act as obstacles that one begins to comprehend that the nature of Christian ministry depends on a recognition of a shared existence. With this recognition comes the realization that this existence is a suffering existence, a limited existence, an interdependent and ultimately a dependent existence. An openness to one's own existence with the inevitable suffering it entails is the formative experience for the minister. Ministers thus formed are in a position to share what they have learned with others in a gesture of love and acceptance, a willingness to discover the truth of life as they experience it.

Ministry is not something done "for people" as much as it is something that is done "with people." The attitude of ministers must be grounded in a respect for the dignity and freedom of all persons. The recurrent temptation will be to "take care" of people in a patronizing manner that diminishes the unique value of each person, the dignity and freedom that is the gift of humanness. When ministers are not repelled by the offensiveness of the suffering itself, they may very well fall prey to the danger of treating suffering persons as less than human, as inferior to themselves, denying them the opportunities life is offering them to actualize their personal freedom in choosing life, even in the midst of suffering.

Much of the great art and literature of the world has been produced by persons whose own lives witness to the deep experiences of personal suffering. The writings of a Dostoyevsky, a Camus, a Wiesel are not products of persons who stand apart and observe a suffering society. They speak for those whose engagement with the realities of suffering existence have led them to deep insights into the human situation and to critical struggles for meaning within the contexts of this suffering. History witnesses to the truth that new societies, new religious insights, new dreams for the future are born out of the depths of frustration and despair, oppression and persecution.

The Ministerial Dilemma

If this is so, we are faced with a real dilemma in the exercise of a Christian ministry to a suffering world. Engaged deeply in reality by the acceptance of our own life and its implications, we experience solidarity with a human condition that is a suffering condition. Repelled on the one hand by that suffering as something which is destructive of humanness, we recognize at the same time that human life is frequently actualized in beautiful and surprising ways in the very midst of these suffering conditions. Our tendencies draw us to marshall our energies to fight suffering because we see it as destructive, frightening, evil. It represents the enemy of human good and is addressed as a foe.

Yet our reflections move us to recognize that the power of this force is not ultimate--that even where it holds sway in the lives of individuals or societies, beautiful acts of faith, hope and love continue to take place, new dreams and new visions emerge, new life continually breaks though. The minister cannot suppose that the work of humanization depends on the elimination of human suffering. We recognize the power of suffering to dehumanize but we recognize as well the forces of grace and freedom which move persons to transcend their specific lot in life and to engage in liberating human acts. The challenge to the ministry is to work against forces that have the power to threaten human freedom, but, on the other hand, to recognize that no matter how hard one fights such oppressive forces human life will always be threatened by them in some form.

The response of the minister is not to choose either to work to eliminate suffering or to work to actualize human responses in the midst of suffering situations. It is a "both-and" situation, as so much of real life is.

Christian ministers labor to create life conditions which minimize oppressive structures all the while realizing that the elimination of these is not within human power to accomplish. Yet ministers recognize that these forces do not have decisive power over human freedom, and that in fact human freedom finds the very context for its most unconditional choice of life in the midst of the suffering situation. Ministers, then, like Jesus, enter fully into the suffering human condition. They cross over and stand with others affirming the human potential of these others to make choices which are necessary for their full humanization, even in the midst of suffering. Frequently, that response to life will require organized action against oppressive life forces, particularly those which are the result of human sinfulness, self-interest and greed. But this worthy goal is never the primary objective of ministry. To choose it as such runs the risk of serving the ministers' own need to defend themselves against suffering, to be motivated by fear of pain and oppression rather than by a love and compassion for every person. To look past the suffering person and focus energy on the suffering itself is to miss the deeply personal dimension of the Incarnational event which embraces the total life of the person with unconditional love and acceptance. It is to try to save people from something, rather than to inspire them to make those choices by which they grow and move towards their full human potential. Ministry is a journey in which ministers walk with those they serve, not an act by which they save others. It is, rather, an act by which they are saved with others because they share the journey and love along the way. Once they have crossed over in the life movement modeled by Jesus to the lives of others, ministers are ministered to as much as they minister.

God's freedom is at work in such a Christian ministry. Its outcomes are not predictable. Ministers engaging in this kind of service are almost guaranteed to end up on a cross of some sort. Their accomplishments will seldom be acknowledged. Their efforts will often not be noticed, or if noticed will frequently be the cause of hostile and perhaps even destructive responses. Anyone who sets out to be a Christian minister will sooner or later realize that she/he is deeply involved in the Paschal mystery. Like Jeremiah, like the Suffering Servant, like Jesus, one's best efforts, most loving responses, will come to a moment when all will seem to have been in vain. It is in that moment that the Spirit of God will be able to break forth through the continued "yes" of this human being. The problem of suffering can and must be addressed with unflagging efforts to feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, right the wrongs of social oppression. Beyond this effort is the call to enter with every other suffering person into that mystery of divine freedom in our lives, to acknowledge our lives as free gifts of a God who is greater than we, who has fully entered into our experience, and who, by being with us, draws us to a life of communion with God and each other. A life without walls, a life-for-others, this is the full human life which God intends.

Summary

Christian ministry facilitates this response. By fully accepting one's own life unconditionally, the Christian minister is enabled to cross over to the life of "the other" after the pattern of Jesus' own salvific act. Armed with a profound reverence for the life of the other, the minister invites the other to make that same unconditional response to life. Concomitantly with this call to life, the minister engages with the other in working to alleviate and eliminate the sources of suffering and oppression which create obstacles to the full actualization of human persons. Ultimately, the minister will face the dark challenge of hoping against hope, required to place her/his trust in the incomprehensible reality of a God whose loving and saving work among us does not necessarily fulfill the agenda which we have set for ourselves. Called to transcend even our own expectations we are drawn to be open to that eschatological fulfillment which surpasses all that we can ask or imagine.

To God whose power now at work in us can do immeasurably more than we can ask or imagine -- to God be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus through all generations, world without end. Amen. (Eph. 3:20-21).

Footnotes:

1. As cited in Dorothee S”elle, Suffering, trans. Everett R. Kalin (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), 14-15.
2. Henri Nouwen, "The Authority of Suffering," Sojourner (Nov., 1977), 10.
3. As cited by S”elle, 115.
4. Arthur McGill, "Our Suffering and the Suffering of the Christ," address given at the First International Ecumenical Congress on The Meaning of Human Suffering, April 22-26, 1979, Notre Dame, IN (Chicago: Stauros International), 24-25.