Suffering that Heals

Who wants to suffer? No one. Who suffers? Everyone, in one way or another. It is part of human existence. A place where suffering is most acutely manifested is at the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes in southern France where our Blessed Mother appeared to St. Bernadette Soubirous in 1858. People from around the world go to this Marian shrine seeking healing in body, mind and soul for an alleviation of the suffering that they are experiencing in their life.  For that reason, Pope St. John Paul II established the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes as the World Day of Prayer for the Sick in 1992 to invite the whole Church to remember in prayer all those who suffer and the people who care for them.
            
The sick and suffering have had a special place in the story of Lourdes since the time of the apparitions. Our Lady asked little Bernadette to drink from the spring during an apparition and, seeing no water except the nearby River Gave, turned there. But Our Lady indicted not that. Bernadette then dug in the ground and a spring began to bubble up. Since then, people have come to the waters that Bernadette discovered to drink them and be immersed in them in the hope of healing. Dramatic physical healings have been documented.  Spiritual healing and restoration of peace have also happened in abundance. Most of all, the afflicted have discovered that bearing the suffering of life can indeed be a source of healing for those who have their faith renewed.
            
Pope St. John II had a special insight into suffering throughout his entire life.  Perhaps that is why the message of Lourdes and the intercession of the Blessed Virgin were so important to him. This insight was born of his own personal suffering that was part of his own lived experience from a young age.  He lost his mother and his older brother whom he idolized at an early age. His promising academic career was brought to an abrupt halt with the closing of the university in Krakow with the Nazi invasion of Poland.  His father died shortly thereafter. Working hard at manual labor during this period, he was struck down by a military truck and left to die. Recovering, he went on to join the underground seminary during the years of the Second World War. Ordained in 1946, he spent his priesthood and his work as a bishop and cardinal under the oppressive and hostile communist regime of Soviet dominated Poland. Elected Successor of St. Peter in 1978, he shouldered the burdens of the Universal Church some 27 years. The later years of his life he suffered greatly with health problems and most especially with Parkinson’s Disease.  What could have been humiliating in his life, he made a shining witness of faith, hope and love as a person who bore his cross with patience and a real sense of purpose. How did he do this?
            
He wrote in his 1984 Apostolic Letter, Salvifici Doloris (On the Meaning of Human Suffering), the following:

“(every person) is called to share in that suffering through which all human suffering has also been redeemed. In bring about the Redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the Redemption. Thus, each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ.” (SD #19)
            
We come to understand that in whatever our suffering may be - physical pain, debilitating illness, humiliation rejection by others, being ignored, the death of a loved one, devasting life circumstances, violence or abuse, mental illness, economic difficulties - we can unite ourselves to the suffering embraced by Our Lord on the Cross. By virtue of our joining with Christ’s suffering borne for us out of love for us our suffering can do incredible good in the world. Two realities in our suffering must happen to achieve this good. First, we must embrace our suffering. Second, we must offer it to God as a sacrificial gift. All of our sufferings that we bear can become efficacious offering to God especially when offered with the Eucharistic Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Jesus at Mass.
            
In our suffering, we can become “co-redeemers” with Christ. We can become those who from our sick beds, our places of persecution, our loneliness, our hardship, transform the world by our offering of love. Offered to God in love in union with the sufferings of Christ, we can bring love and mercy into lives unknown to us. We should not waste our suffering. Rather we should use it to transform ourselves and others in joy.
            
So, we may, “Why do we call upon Our Blessed Mother when we suffer?  Why is Lourdes so important?”  Remember that, when she and St. Joseph presented the Infant Jesus in the temple, Simeon told her that a sword would pierce her being.  This prophecy is fulfilled at the Passion and Death of Jesus as she stood by His Cross and united her suffering with His.  There Our Lord gave us to her (Behold, your son(s and daughters) and her to us (Behold your Mother).  In our bond with her as her children, she teaches us how to offer our sufferings in union with His.  We are in her “School of Suffering” where she shows us how to transform the world and ourselves by embracing our suffering and offering it to God in union with the Passion and Death of Jesus.  She shows us that suffering borne in love becomes a sacrifice that enables us to enter into the mystery of the Redemption.  In effect, we become “co-redeemers” with and through Jesus for the salvation of the world.
 
Most Reverend William J. Waltersheid
Auxiliary Bishop of Pittsburgh