Day 38. Healing Our Hurts
Don't you put the past in a room, in the cellar, and lock the door and just never go in there? Because that's what I do. ... Then you meet someone special and all you want to do is toss them the key, say open up, step inside, but you can't because it's dark, and there are demons, and if anybody saw how ugly it was...
Ripley, The Talented Mr. Ripley
CAUTION: Please be advised that today’s meditation mentions sexual abuse and other experiences of personal trauma.
Why does a good God allow suffering? The question has plagued humans throughout history. Often it veils a more personal version of the same question: Why does a good God allow me to suffer? “How could you allow this to happen to me?” we ask God reproachfully when we experience pain. “You say you’re a loving father. Wouldn’t a loving father prevent this from happening to his own daughter or son?” The implication is that God somehow isn’t doing his job.
When we speak of healing, we must first acknowledge the resentment that usually accompanies the hurt – a resentment directed at God. Especially when he doesn’t seem to care about the on-going pain and difficulty we experience from these hurts. Pain prompts our boldness to question the Almighty: “Where was God when this happened? Where is he now?”
Job did this. Job was convinced of his innocence and defied God to explain the reasons for his great affliction. In a scene that rivals the most dramatic confrontations of ancient literature, God squares off against Job and interrogates him in response, “Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning and shown the dawn its place?” (Job 38:12). God’s answer, it seems, isn’t so much an explanation of his ways as a re-asserting of right relationship. “Who are you to question me?” God says. Job repents of his anger against God. We must begin by doing the same.
What Job could not imagine, and what God could not describe to him, was God’s real answer to the question, “Why must I suffer?” In his son Jesus, God gave the definitive answer to human suffering in the most remarkable way. He didn’t take away our suffering. He filled it with his presence! Jesus bore in his own flesh a suffering beyond anything we have endured. That means that there is no depth of grief, of depression, of fear or emptiness which you can experience that he has not already experienced – and sanctified by his blood and tears. You are not – and never were – alone in your pain. It is a great call to faith. Suffering tells us, “This pain is meaningless.” God tells us, “This pain is meaningful – the birth pangs of immortality.” When we the baptized suffer, we become co-redeemers with Christ. “Every form of suffering, given fresh life by the power of this cross, should become no longer the weakness of man but the power of God.” Still, one who suffers deeply may find these words trite. If so, look to the cross. The cross alone can bear the weight of intense grief. The cross alone embraces us in our agony.
Beyond suffering there is healing. Jesus came to this world with power to heal. It is the sign of his messianic identity. “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have the good news proclaimed to them” (Mt. 11:4-6). How can we discover the way to this healing?
Healings, like hurts, fall into two general categories. First, there are immediate and complete healings that occur as a single event. Second, there are gradual healings that happen over time. I say this because most people tend to think of healing almost exclusively in terms of the former – forgetting that God may be working in their own lives in the vein of the latter. He may be healing them slowly, without their knowing it. And there is no correlation that I can see between the hurt and the healing. So a hurt that was inflicted gradually over time may be healed instantly, while the hurt from a single traumatic event may take many weeks, months or even years to heal. I can discern no pattern.
Sometimes people don’t expect to have to put much effort into being healed. They wait passively and even angrily for God’s rescue. Yet scripture describes just the opposite – we read there of the great lengths many went to be healed by God. Some climbed down through roofs (Mk. 2:4), or traveled from far away (Jn 4:46-54). Some kept crying out though they were told to shut up (Mk. 10:46-52), and some dared to approach Jesus even though society called them “dirty” and “unclean” (Mk. 5:25-34).
All of these had one thing in common. All had faith. This is the needed element for healing to happen. Do you believe that God can heal you? If not, ask for the gift of faith. “Lord I believe, help my unbelief!” (Mk. 9:24). Remember, faith is a gift. Use the faith you have. Don’t feel guilty about the faith you lack.
But these were physical healings. What about the hurts that come from events of the past? Once the deed is done, can there be any healing from the great affliction it causes? There can. If you recall the great pendulum we described yesterday – the History of Hurts that some people push out of their lives only to realize in horror that it is returning – we made a discovery. Such a great weight is anchored in our memories. If we wish to be set free from this frightful threat to our table – to our lives – we must cut it loose at its source. We must go back and face the memory to which the chain is fastened. But we cannot go back to face it alone.
If such is the case for you, I urge you to look to Jesus on the cross and invite him into your memories. His power to save flows from the suffering he endured for your sake. He suffered with you in whatever inner wounds you still bear. “Jesus, I lay my pain, my wounds, my anger at the foot of your cross. I cannot bear them anymore. Carry them with me. Remove them, will you, when you know the time is right?”
Jesus is fully human. That means his suffering was like ours. It was not a show. It was for real. Jesus is also fully divine. That means that his healing, like his person, is eternal. Eternal here doesn’t mean ‘forever’ so much as it means ‘unlimited by time.’ Jesus is not limited to the “now” as we temporal (time-bound) beings are. So Jesus can go back to the moment that evil was committed against us and unlock the chain that links the hurt to our memories of the event. Once unlocked, the hurt crashes harmlessly to the Ground of Reality. Again, if the traumatic event is painful enough, I urge you to seek professional help. There are Christian counselors who are very familiar with and gifted in the healing of memories.
If the trauma you’ve experienced involves sexual or physical abuse, a further clarification is needed here. Offering forgiveness, something I describe below, does not mean we ignore evil. Healing brings freedom along with the courage, if necessary, to report serious wrong-doing to the appropriate authorities.
In order to free you from the hurt, though, Jesus needs something from you. In your imagination, picture that as you stand on the tabletop and gaze up into the darkness above searching for the root memory to some of your most painful present hurts, you are suddenly aware of a great weight around your neck. You look down to discover a large key. It is forged of the same heavy iron as the hurts rolling around the surface of your life. Though it weighs you down, you prefer to keep it hanging there. Why? It is the Key of Forgiving, and by keeping it to yourself, you withhold it, you think, from the person who caused your great pain. You imagine somewhere that they are bound by the chains of your anger and that this Key you hold will keep them bound forever. Sadly, the opposite is true. The Key of Forgiving is not only for their chains but for your own.
Forgiveness unlocks the one who forgives as well as the one forgiven. To say to someone who has hurt you, “I forgive you” doesn’t mean that the evil he has done (or may still be doing) is all right with you. It simply acknowledges that you are not the one to stand over him as his judge. You can certainly condemn the evil act that was committed against you (or against someone you love), but you may not condemn the person who committed the act. Forgiveness leaves the judging to the one – the only One – who is truly qualified to judge. If this person refuses to repent of his evil, he will face a judge who alone can assess his real guilt and therefore apply a truly just punishment. Scripture reminds us: “the wrath of a man does not accomplish the righteousness of God” (James 1:20). This means that our revenge – bitterness, grudges, getting even – never accomplishes justice, and does not liberate us as victims. No retaliation really makes us feel better. Only forgiveness does.
Give the Key of Forgiving to Christ. Let him decide how to handle the one who caused the hurt. Let him unlock the chains that bind your hurts to the Level of Memory and that keep them from rolling off your tabletop. Let him remove them by his great power; in his own time; according to his perfect wisdom.
But what about those who aren’t aware of great hurts? Are you excluded from a direct and personal experience of Jesus’ healing power? No, even those without such hurts can know the saving power of God. Don’t forget that Mary, who was preserved from sin from birth, could still rejoice in “God my savior” and profess that the Lord “has done great things for me” (Lk. 1:49). The one who doesn’t need deep healing is invited by God (as are all baptized Christians) to recognize the great gift of salvation itself – that Jesus has saved me personally from sin and death.
As with hurts and with healings, the personal recognition of God’s gift of salvation can also come to us in a single, dramatic realization (what some Christians mistakenly call being “born again”). It can also (and more often from my experience) emerge gradually over time as the great gifts of God’s redemption in Christ become more evident through our lived experience. No one way is better than any other. All have as their object the same revelation: the power of God to save, to heal and to set free. Let us all give thanks to God who has “looked upon us in our lowliness,” and “has done great things” for us. “Blessed be his name forever!”
Novena Prayer
Jesus says: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
Pier Giorgio responds: With violence you sow hatred, and you harvest its bad fruits. With charity, you sow peace among men – not the peace that the world gives, but the true peace that only faith in Jesus Christ can give us in common brotherhood.
Let us pray: Blessed Pier Giorgio, guide me in claiming my rightful inheritance as a child of God and heir of His Kingdom. Show me, by your own example, how to be slow to anger, and gentle in my dealings with others. Help me to show forth the peace of Christ by speaking words of peace, and by living a life of peace.
Blessed Pier Giorgio, I ask for your intercession in obtaining from God, Who is meek and humble of heart, all the graces necessary for my spiritual and temporal welfare. I confidently turn to you for help in my present need: (in your own words, ask for the Lord to lead you into greater freedom and self knowledge)
A Book of Prayers in Honor of Blessed Pier Giorgio Frassati, by Rev. Timothy E. Deeter
Make it My Own
Daily Discernment Workbook
A QUOTE TO NOTE
1. There is No Living without Suffering. Pope Benedict XVI
There is no human life without suffering, and he who is incapable of accepting suffering is refusing himself the purifications that alone allow us to reach maturity. In communion with Christ, pain becomes meaningful, not only for myself, as a process of ablatio (stripping away) in which God purges me of the dross that conceals his image, but beyond me, for the whole, so that we can all say with Saint Paul: “But now I rejoice in my sufferings for you and so complete in my flesh what is still lacking in the afflictions of Christ for sake of his body, the Church” (Col. 1:24).
…Where there is no longer anything worth dying for, even life itself is no longer worth living.
Based on this passage, how would you answer someone who says, “God wouldn’t want us to suffer”?
Describe a trial you experienced that led you to greater maturity. When you were suffering this trial, did you wonder if it was meaningless? How do you see it now?
GOING DEEP
2. A Story About Stripping Away
This excerpt is from The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis’ classic series following the adventures of the Pevensie children in a secret world of talking animals, swords and sorcery. In one volume, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, a bratty relative of Edmund and Lucy named Eustace Grubb is changed into a dragon because of his greed. In the following passage he explains to Edmund how he has been healed by Aslan the Lion, whom readers familiar with the books recognize as a Christ figure. What follows is a marvelous metaphor for the healing process – when our efforts to change are seen to be inadequate and Jesus must do the deeper work.
Eustace continued, “…I looked up and saw the very last thing I expected: a huge lion coming slowly towards me. And one queer thing was that there was no moon last night, but there was moonlight where the lion was. So it came nearer and nearer. I was terribly afraid of it. You may think that, being a dragon, I could have knocked any lion out easily enough. But it wasn't that kind of fear. I wasn't afraid of it eating me, I was just afraid of it - if you can understand. Well, it came close up to me and looked straight into my eyes. And I shut my eyes tight. But that wasn't any good because it told me to follow it."
"You mean it spoke?” Edmund asked.
"I don'T know. Now that you mention it, I don't think it did. But it told me all the same. And I knew I'd have to do what it told me, so I got up and followed it. And it led me a long way into the mountains. And there was always this moonlight over and round the lion wherever we went. So at last we came to the top of a mountain I'd never seen before and on the top of this mountain there was a garden - trees and fruit and everything. In the middle of it there was a well.
"I knew it was a well because you could see the water bubbling up from the bottom of it: but it was a lot bigger than most wells - like a very big, round bath with marble steps going down into it. The water was as clear as anything and I thought if I could get in there and bathe it would ease the pain in my leg. But the lion told me I must undress first. Mind you, I don't know if he said any words out loud or not.
"I was just going to say that I couldn't undress because I hadn't any clothes on when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I, that's what the lion means. So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana. In a minute or two I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.
"But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before. Oh, that's all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I'll have to get out of it too. So 1 scratched and tore again and this underskin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bath.
"Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.
"Then the lion said - but I don't know if it spoke - "You will have to let me undress you." I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.
"The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know - if you've ever picked the scab off a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away."
"I know exactly what you mean," said Edmund.
"Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off - just as I thought I'd done it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt - and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me - I didn't like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I'd no skin on - and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I'd turned into a boy again. You'd think me simply phoney if I told you how I felt about my own arms. I know they've no muscle and are pretty mouldy compared with Caspian's, but I was so glad to see them.
"After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me -"
"Dressed you. With his paws?"
"Well, I don't exactly remember that bit. But he did somehow or other: in new clothes - the same I've got on now, as a matter of fact. And then suddenly I was back here. Which is what makes me think it must have been a dream."
"No. It wasn't a dream," said Edmund.
"Why not?"
"Well, there are the clothes, for one thing. And you have been - well, un-dragoned, for another.
"What do you think it was, then?" asked Eustace.
"I think you've seen Aslan," said Edmund.
“…it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt.” The dragon skin in this story can symbolize human sinfulness and its damaging effects on our character. Why do Aslan’s claws have to dig so deep to remove it all? Why are our efforts insufficient to fix the harm our own selfishness has caused”
Conclude with
“Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be.
World without end, Amen.”
[0] lead quote - The Talented Mr. Ripley, Paramount Pictures / Miramax, 1999
[1] Pope Benedict XVI, Called to Communion, Understanding the Church Today, tr. by Adrian Walker, San Francisco, Ignatius Press, 1996, p. 155
[2] C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Chronicles of Narnia, Book 5, HarperTrophy / HarperCollins, New York, 1980, pp 106-110