What is your reaction when confronted with human heartache?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Do you feel the urge to fix it? To prescribe the right book, the right prayers, the right slogan, or the right regimen? Or maybe you crack a joke to lighten the mood; maybe you put things in perspective with a comparison: \u201cWell, at least you\u2019re not like ____________________.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Fixing feels good at the time. We tell ourselves that we are\n\u201chelping\u201d the other person \u2013 but we are probably helping ourselves. We don\u2019t\nlike that feeling of heartache, and we definitely don\u2019t like feeling powerless\n\u2013 so we back away from the abyss by trying to fix it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Job\u2019s friends arrived, they found him sitting on a pile of dung, scraping at his scabs with a shard of pottery. They sat with him for a time, but couldn\u2019t abide his heartache for very long. They shifted to analyzing and fixing, and thereby abandoned him in his pain. Indeed, they blamed him for it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Giving advice is easy \u2013 and not nearly so helpful as we like to think. In some cases, it is our way of backing away from solidarity with the suffering person. In others, it is an arrogant way of saying, \u201cIf only you were more like me, your problems would go away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have noticed that subtle message in myself and others \u2013 both at the individual and the collective level. I think of Casa Hogar Juan Pablo II \u2013 an orphanage in Peru founded by Fr. Joe Walijewski, a saintly priest from our diocese. I have been there five times, usually with a group of young people. The thought process at home is almost always the same \u2013 Isn\u2019t it great that we are sending down some of our youth to go and help those poor people?<\/em> We assume that our affluent (and white) American ways are so much better than theirs. We assume that we have the power, wisdom, and resources to solve their problems. If only they were more like us\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Fr. Walijewski actually saw it the other way around, dreaming of a \u201cmission in reverse.\u201d The mission is not our people going down to Peru. Rather, we go to Peru so that the children there can teach us what it means to be human!<\/p>\n\n\n\n And they have taught us \u2013 every time. Amidst material poverty, amidst government corruption, amidst heart-wrenching stories of loss or betrayal, we have encountered stunning beauty and joy. It exposes our own deeper poverty \u2013 what Mother Teresa called \u201cthe poverty of affluence.\u201d Every single trip I have witnessed the shocked realization in our youths\u2019 faces and tears: How can children possessing so little, children who have suffered so much, be so joyful? How can they love so tenderly and so vulnerably? How can we who possess so much be so joyless?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Jesus invites us to be with each other in communion \u2013 both\nin the agonizing sorrows of life and in the intense joys. As Paul puts it, \u201cRejoice\nwith those who rejoice; weep with those who weep\u201d (Romans 12:15). That means\nthat the human heart of a saint is never far from tears and never far from\nlaughter. Those who are the most open to tears are also the most capable of\njoy. That is because, in the Paschal Mystery, Jesus has redeemed human\nheartache by investing meaning into it. He invites us, not to bypass suffering\nand the Cross, but to follow him through it to new and abundant life \u2013 to\nfollow where the brave shepherd has gone before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is only when we face the fuller depths of our humanity \u2013\nin all its beauty and brokenness \u2013 that we can die with Christ and rise with\nhim. It is in such human encounters that\nthe newness of the Resurrection breaks in. Those who learn to abide in the midst\nof heartache, staying vulnerable and receptive to God and others, will experience\nthe surprise of the Resurrection and the joy of the Gospel. Jesus assures us\nthat his Father blesses those who are poor, those who grieve and mourn, those\nwho are willing to be vulnerable, those who hunger and thirst. Facing heartache\nallows us to receive the Father\u2019s blessing. \u201cFixing\u201d it closes us off and\ndiminishes our receptivity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s face it – facing heartache is hard! As the great poet\nT.S. Eliot put it, \u201cHuman kind cannot bear very much reality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think that is why, when Jesus died on Good Friday, he said \u201cBehold \u2013 your mother!\u201d \u2013 not just to John, but to every beloved disciple. Mary was often in situations in which she intuitively understood that God was doing amazing things. She did not at all know how it was going to be okay. I am thinking of the Annunciation, Jesus\u2019 birth in a stable, the flight into Egypt, the cryptic words of Simeon in the Temple, the losing and finding of 12-year-old Jesus in Jerusalem, his torture and execution, and the awful watching and waiting on Holy Saturday. Again and again, mother Mary faced heartache. Again and again she waited with expectant hope and was surprised by the marvels of the Kingdom of God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The last time the Bible tells us about Mary is in Acts 1.\nFollowing Jesus\u2019 Ascension into heaven, yet again she abides in uncertainty and\nmessiness. She prays with the apostles every day in the cenacle \u2013 nine days in\nall. It took those apostles many years and many failed attempts, but they\nlearned to abide and receive. The Jewish feast of Pentecost arrives \u2013 the day\nto bring first fruits of the harvest to God. In a stunning and joy-filled\nreversal, God gives the first fruits to his Church in the person of the Holy\nSpirit. Mary recedes, and the early Church comes to birth, set on fire with the\nHoly Spirit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Church is intended by God to\nbe a community that faces heartache vulnerably, open to the Father in holy\nreceptivity and open to each other in true communal fellowship. Rather than\ntrying to fix or advise others so that their story can fit into the\npreconceived mold of our own story, we expect the Holy Spirit to show up. We\nexpect the Father\u2019s blessing. We expect that the new life of Resurrection will\nsurprise us. Fixing is too constrictive to allow space for God to do his work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do we have the courage to face our humanity together, and to abide together in Hope?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What is your reaction when confronted with human heartache? Do you feel the urge to fix it? To prescribe the right book, the right prayers, the right slogan, or the right regimen? Or maybe you crack a joke to lighten the mood; maybe you put things in perspective with a comparison: \u201cWell, at least you\u2019re … <\/p>\n