The Wild Tears Fall

And when the king came back out of the garden set with trees, and entered into the place of the banquet, he found Aman was fallen upon the bed on which Esther lay, and he said: He will force the queen also in my presence, in my own house. The word was not yet gone out of the king's mouth, and immediately they covered his face. And Harbona, one of the eunuchs that stood waiting on the king, said: Behold the gibbet which he hath prepared for Mardochai...And the king said to him: Hang him upon it. So Aman was hanged on the gibbet...and the king's wrath ceased. (Esther VII: 8-10)

Queen Esther observed in prayer, before she went before her lord, king, and husband's face, that the threat against the Jews had been visited upon them as punishment for sin. Great then had been her personal mortification before she undertook to save her people. Likewise, she demanded fasting and weeping from them, before she ventured to beg Artaxerxes to spare the lives of the Israelites.



Father Augustyn Kordecki, and later King Jan Kazimierz, made the same observation concerning the Swedish 'Deluge' (1655-1660), the former ascribing that chastisement to the sins of Poland's people, and the latter to the crimes of her rulers. His majesty spoke these words after he had crowned the Virgin as his nation's queen:

As I see, to the great sorrow of my soul, that all the adversities which have fallen upon my Kingdom in the last seven years—the epidemics, the wars, and other misfortunes—were sent by the Supreme Judge as a punishment for the groans and the oppression suffered by the peasants, I promise and vow, after the conquest of peace, in union with all the states, to use all means to free my people from all unjust burdens and oppressions. Grant, Oh most loving Queen and Lady, that I obtain the grace of Thy Son to do all that I propose, and which Thou hast inspired me! (Memoirs of the Siege of Częstochowa, Augustyn Kordecki, C. S. P., translated by Plinio Correa de Oliveira)

This noble resolution was most wisely entrusted to Our Lady's keeping. After all, it had been the miraculous survival of her shrine that had turned the tide of the war in Poland's favour. 

Yet, while the great men living through this fiery era beat their breasts for their own sins and prepared to save their fatherland with mortification and repentence, the enemy were unwittingly blunting their own swords by committing iniquities themselves. Like Nabuchodonozor's warrior, Holofernes of the Book of Judith, General Burchard Müller, might have fared better in his campaign against the Catholics of Poland if he had had his own Achior to warn him thusly: 


Wheresoever they went in without bow and arrow, and without shield and sword, their God fought for them and overcame. And there was no one that triumphed over this people, but when they departed from the worship of the Lord their God. But as often as beside their own God, they worshipped any other, they were given to spoil, and to the sword, and to reproach. And as often as they were penitent for having revolted from the worship of their God, the God of heaven gave them power to resist. (Judith V: 16-19)


Alas for him, the general's religious sect had ousted that book from Holy Scripture, so he could not profit from its wisdom.  Making the same mistake as General Holofernes, he sallied forth in contempt of the Church still revered in Poland, even referring to the shrine he wished to capture as a 'henhouse.' History would soon turn him into another proof that God is not mocked, and only a fool spits on His beloved.


Still, no one could call him unreasonable for expecting the surrender of a single, Polish fortress (and a monastic one at that) when the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had already buckled under the Swedish invasion. And did he not go about the siege with the greatest of human wisdom? Did he not send Polish, Catholic aristocrats and even old friends to treat with those stubborn Paulines? Did he not offer them the hope of preserving their monastery if they would yield? Did he not cajole them not once, but eleven times? One of these emissaries even begged Father Kordecki to give in by threatening the defenders of Jasna Góra with damnation: 


...the aim of a religious order is to abstain from temporal matters. What do you have to do with the turbulence of war, you whose rules call you to solitude and silence. Ponder it well, lest the arms which you brandish instead of your Rosaries, carry you to perdition…. (ibid.)

Yet, though the Polish king was a refugee in Silesia, the nobles had surrendered to the invaders, and all tactical and technical prospects of defending the Bright Mountain were bleak, Father Kordecki was driven by one fierce determination--no one who despised Our Lady would stain her sanctuary with his impious feet.


His staunch defiance cannot be justified or condemned in the light of human reason. The probability of clemency on the part of the Swedes would have been a matter for diviners, not logicians. Though defeat was certain, stalling for time in the face of capitulating to an unendurable peace possessed its own wordly wisdom. In the end, surrender is always a gamble, and choosing one side of a coin is not mad.


Can the priest be condemned on religious grounds then? Was the nobleman correct in admonishing him against taking such an active stance on what must in the end be a secular affair--the identity of one's sovereign?


There can be no doubt that fire for one's homeland and the principles of natural pride consumed many of the hearts defending Jasna Góra's walls. But the motto carved above so many portals in Polska is Bóg, Honor, i Ojczyzna. When some of the monks complained against Father Augustyn that it was for God's providence to determine the fate of kings and sovereigns, he did not dispute this fact, but made a new argument:


“…what Faith is ours,” he bellowed, “what love, what gratitude to God Who is so generous to us—that such small damage to our earthly comforts is able to turn us away from the guard and protection of the chest containing the celestial treasures of the eternal King? Let us consider that it is far more prudent for us to defend the integrity of the House of God, the Holy Faith and at the same time our own liberties, than for us to lose all and, in addition, to go into exile and eternal slavery.” (ibid.)


There would be no trust given to the devil, nor a chance for him to commit defamation. This resolve, united with hopeful reports of the king, does much to justify the Pauline's reason, but the feeling remains that there was also something--rather someone--else, who would not allow him to give in. As with Ozias, the Israelite ruler of Bethulia, this someone was very likely a woman.


When Holofernes lay siege to the above-mentioned city, the inhabitants (like those sheltered in the monastery) did not religiously apostatize as they became parched with thirst. Separating their earthly state from their eternal duties, they argued for capitulation on different grounds:


For it is better, that being captives we should live and bless the Lord, than that we should die, and be a reproach to all flesh, after we have seen our wives and our infants die before our eyes. We call to witness this day heaven and earth, and the God of our fathers, who taketh vengeance upon us according to our sins, conjuring you to deliver now the city into the hand of the army of Holofernes, that our end may be short by the edge of the sword, which is made longer by the drought of thirst...

and their ruler, Ozias, was prepared to give in:


 Ozias rising up all in tears, said: Be of good courage, my brethren, and let us wait these five days for mercy from the Lord. For perhaps he will put a stop to his indignation, and will give glory to his own name. But if after five days be past there come no aid, we will do the things which you leave spoken.
(Judith VII 16-17, 23-25)


In the modern world, with its restive field of free choice, we so often forget what our individual duties are or if we have any at all. What is explicitly holy or evil is taught to us and inscribed on our hearts, but the things we owe to God and the world as ourselves is a thing we hardly ever stop to consider. Living life according to the universal virtues, it does not often occur to the modern thinker that what is allowed for him, may not be permitted another man or that the reverse may be true.


Hence, while such a resolution as Ozias's is not objectively impious, and a Christian state of today may even be permittied it, it was wrong. The matter was apparent for the noblewoman Judith:

And who are you that tempt the Lord? This is not a word that may draw down mercy, but rather that may stir up wrath, and enkindle indignation.You have set a time for the mercy of the Lord, and you have appointed him a day, according to your pleasure...And therefore let us humble our souls before him, and continuing in an humble spirit, in his service: Let us ask the Lord with tears, that according to his will so he would shew his mercy to us: that as our heart is troubled by their pride, so also we may glorify in our humility. (Judith VIII 11-13, 16-17)


Perhaps the Pauline priest was not reading Judith in his time of great trial, but he responded to a traitorous, Polish lord that came to urge his surrender with the same fire as that great lady:

“On account of former benefits which Your Excellency has conceded to this sanctuary, your life has been spared various times during this siege; but lower thy head, do not abuse the patience of God!” (ibid.)

Yes, lower thy head lest a hand mightier than Judith's sever it as she severed that of Holofernes's. It was not until after the siege, and from the mouth of enemy witnesses, that the Virgin's gallant knights learnt she had been with them all the time:


"What witch is this that is to be found in your cloister of Czestohowa, who covered with a blue mantle sallies from the cloister and walks along the walls, resting from time to time on the bastions – and whose sight makes our people drop with terror, so much so that, when she appears, we have to turn our faces to the ground and protect our eyes?" (ibid.)

However, the Poles had soldiered on by faith and not by sight. That vision which terrified the Swedes had not consoled their earthly eyes. Persevering with the sacraments without fail, honouring Our Lord without fear, and praying without ceasing had been their preservation and sweetness of spirit. In the end, it prevailed in Heaven and on earth.

"Boo!" M. shouted at me as I left the barn. I stopped and clutched my heart with a gasp, though I could not give him the same satisfying yelp that I had the day before. He and his sister, taking me by the hand, had told me that a dragon was slumbering in the cellar of the farmhouse.

'Naprawdę?' I asked, eagerly accompanying them. Alas, I shall always be more keen on childlike games of make-believe then adult pastimes such as cards. The light had been beginning to fade, and the cellar was appropriately black and dark, though at the end of the corridor, I could see our hardy traffic directors laying down their sleeping places for the night. 'Er, I don't think I should come in here,' I told O., her brother having disappeared, 'This is a room for the men.'

'The dragon is in here,' she said, gesturing towards an alcove on the left. I obediently put my head in, ready to conjure in my head my own image of scaly creature avariciously clutching its bed of gold with two slender threads of smoke rising from its nostrils....'BOO!' Well, instead of my imaginary dragon, I was greeted with a real boy, and he was rewarded with a genuine yelp on my part. From that day, we had our game of 'boo' where M. or O. would cry it, and I would feign shock, which later became fainting. Surely that's not a wicked distraction?

It was going to be another light day, a little over 16 miles, and I made sure to tell Cl. Krszysztof that if he had a free moment, I would love to hear the end of his conference whenever he had a free moment. I also had a question for him. The call to leave presently came, and again I departed with tea still warm in my tin cup. As we left, a farmwife opened the gates of her stable and a team of fine, heavy horses, honey-toned bays with golden manes and tails, came trotting out in a dignified prance. Looking neither to the left, nor the right, they made straight for the pastures. 'They know where to go,' one sister pilgrim commented as we admired them together.

'If only the children of men could be like that,' I thought automatically, then chided myself. Many sons of Adam and daughters of Eve had surpassed the animals in obedience and humble cooperation, such as St. Lawrence, whose feastday's vigil we had celebrated that morning. The Offertory now sounded again in my mind:

Oratio mea munda est: et ídeo peto ut detur locus voci me­æ in cœlo: quia ibi est judex meus, et cónscius meus in excélsis: ascéndat as Dóminum deprecátio mea. (Job XVI: 20)

Then I thought of the 'New City' on the river, which would be our second stop for the day. I longed to again see the church where Blessed Honorat Koźmiński had done his great work (and to buy a new scapular from the religious articles shop across the street). How divergent were the destinies of saints, one roasted on a spit as a witness to mankind, and the other secretly labouring to save souls from the cell of a confessional.

The weather showed signs of more varying fickleness throughout the day. Shade actually brought shivers to some, while the sun was suitably sweltering. We left our second stop in that sun though with smiles on our faces. Well, I was determined to smile anyhow. I just had spoken with a man from another group, a congenial economist with broad-minded views, and had learned that the Biało-Czarno-Czerwona group had the reputation that I should have (from experience) expected a traditional group to have : smutna grupa (sad group).

That pricked me, for although I have known many traditionalists who qualified as gloomy extremists, no one in our group fit that bill in the slightest. In fact, some of us weren't traditionalists, and those who were were the evangelical sort. E.g., the moment I chose to wear the veil at all Masses (including the Novus Ordo), I made it my endeavour to always look very cheerful, so as not to scandalize the more 'mainstream' Catholics into thinking tradition was something gloomy. The same could certainly be said of the other pilgrims in our group. The beautiful ladies did not wear sacks on the pilgrimage. The children walking with us were not browbeaten, and the men were hardly domineering (Piotr, one of the traffic directors, only told me to pick up the pace once this year :). And if we often sang Ad mortem festinamus, we also sang Czarno Madonno...so there!
We turned off the main road and towards the woods. Today we had the Way of the Cross, but our way was remarkably easy on the asphalt when compared to the deep, loose sand of the route the year before.

This time, I did not meditate on the Stations of the Cross in my own missal, but tried to follow the prayers which the group employed as a whole. To this day I have not found the form employed that afternoon, but perhaps next year I shall have enough Polish to understand it perfectly.

When the Way of the Cross was concluded and we were off at our natural pace again, Cl. Krzysztof found me and took up his sermon on vocations again. In the warmth of the sun and his optimism, I found myself revisiting that cold day in Kraków again.


Many may smile at my irrationality, and in retrospect, I laugh at it myself, but I was furious and hurt. Being thwarted in attending Mass is a disappointment that my nature always takes very personally, now I would have to strike out and find another where I would not understand the readings of the Bible. I looked down from the battlements of the Wawel over that fair city--so cold, grey, and hard in the icy grip of January. Some moments can seem so insignificant to an outsider, but this was the moment (prepared by both what I had read and learned with experience), the precise moment where my faith in personal providence withered. It was as if an abyss was yawning before me, and a clotted talon of a demon was pressing itself into the flesh of my heart. I had shaken my head and determined to ignore it, but from that day on, an unwilling agnosticism had taken up its abode in me.

But this day was not cold, and the seminarian spoke words that I loved and wished dearly to be true. However, my impertinent reason was not yet moved, and when he asked whether I had a question, I put a dilemma before him. It had been one of my own, but was abstracted from my particulars into a universal problem, and it had been a situation to which I was sure there was no answer.

He pondered a moment, and then he began to speak. Anyone who has jarred a glass of water sitting in a ice-box will note that the freezing transition is so immediate it dazzles the mind. Thawing of ice is much slower, yet when the salt of Heaven touches a glacier, the collapse of that edifice may well be more awe-inspiring than the freeze which created it.

I had not anticipated that Cl. Krzysztof's words would so identically mirror the still, small voice that had so often spoken to me. That his words could be so pertinent to me in particular was stupefying, and that I found a part of my soul begin to wake again, was too much. It was if the road to Częstochowa had unveiled itself as the road to Emmaus and the fair-headed seminarian in black next to me had been revealed as the dark Rabbi in white. May God bless his vocation!

The day gently declined, and we weary travellers soon found ourselves at the campsite. No barns tonight. I was laying down my mat when a sister pilgrim asked me a question, to which I responded in Polish, peppered with English for each word I could not articulate. I turned around and saw a new face that had been unpacking next to me. She smiled. 'Are you Rachel?'

'Yes.'

'Hello, I'm Maria! Our friend in common, Piotrek L., told me about you.'

'Oh, Heaven only knows what that means,' I thought, but the communiqué could not have been too bad, as Maria and I were soon getting on splendidly. She is Slovakian and blessed with enviable linguistic skills, so communication was certainly no problem.

We determined on setting out for the river to bathe (though seeing how devoid of cover the bank was, we ended up taking our washing bowls into the forest). The way back to camp was under a gloriously illumined sky, and the pilgrims were again blessed with a most splendid sunset. I remember admiring just such a twilight the year before.

Supper was also special, with even a desert of gingerbread and cinnamon cookies after the fact. Maria and I were both wondering what the occasion was, when Father Grzegorz took the 
And thank you Marzena!

microphone and informed us that it was Cl. Krzysztof's birthday.

Had no one known that Father Grzegorz, Krzysztof, and Adam Ś. were brothers, they would certainly have seen the fact within minutes. The priest's praise of his younger brother, the seminarian's humble anguish at being praised, and the layman's good-natured wisecracking were as evident a display of the bond of kinship as an illustrated family tree.

Darkness came, as did the time for Compline. As the air grew colder, I felt chill down my spine at the verse we read. Such a frightening one in many ways, yet it is one of my favourites, especially as it is the first Pope quoting Christ directly:

Be sober and watch: because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, goeth about seeking whom he may devour. Whom resist ye, strong in faith: knowing that the same affliction befalls your brethren who are in the world. (I Peter V: 8-9)

Reading that chapter again, I also see now how the two preceding verses spoke to me (and who knows how many others) in the most intimate way that day:
Be you humbled therefore under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in the time of visitation: Casting all your care upon Him, for He hath care of you.

Amongst the outspoken who hate the Church with an utmost and dire vengeance is the drunken Christopher Hitchens. Shamefully ad hominem as it is of me, I cannot but observe that he presents himself as an Ivan Karamazov after that man has 'thrown down the cup of life' and chosen to debase himself. Well, at least I know that Hitchens himself does not object to personal attacks and cannot blame me for engaging in the same practice. This is to his credit; he is consistent, boldly consistent. A consistent enough atheist to despise Blessed Teresa of Calcutta is a rare occurrence.

Few anti-Catholics of any ilk dare to such heights of spiritual audacity, whether their principles dictate it or not. The foundress of the Missionaries of Charity is such a corporeal and spiritual proof of God's dwelling in the Church, such an embodiment of all that humanity wishes it had the courage to be, that both natural human reverence and idealogical self-preservation demand obeisance. Pat Robertson has always been glad to glaze over her Catholicity and praise her work. While attending her funeral, Hillary Clinton likely blocked out the memory of Mother Teresa's unequivocal condemndation of abortion at the White House's National Prayer Breakfast. Yet, Hitchens has actually done Blessed Teresa the courtesy of listening to her full message and condemning it.

What is Blessed Teresa's full message? It is simply that of the Roman Catholic Church's, of Christ's:

If the world hate you, know ye, that it hath hated Me before you. If you had been of the world, the world would love its own: but because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you. Remember my word that I said to you: The servant is not greater than his master. If they have persecuted Me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept My word, they will keep yours also. (John 15: 18-20)

....to thee, do we send up our sighs, mourning, and weeping in this valley of tears... (Salve Regina)

I do not promise to make you happy in this world but in the other. (Our Lady of Lourdes)

Expect suffering here on Earth. Our true home and place is in Heaven. Expect happiness in the Hereafter. Naturally, one who doesn't believe in a 'hereafter' will rebel against such a doctrine. And there is yet another reason for non-believers to be incensed.

The Church does not teach that we must wait until Heaven to accomplish God's will. There is a fitting occupation for us in this World, even though the Earth is merely a way station. This occupation is constant and active submission to God's Will. To take up our crosses daily, and with a cheerful spirit, to follow in His bloodied footsteps is our charge. And being One Body, with other members of the Church and with humanity, we must also accept the sufferings of others as the Will of God.

Blessed Teresa of Calcutta pledged her life to alleviate the pains of the poor, but according to Christ's paradox, she also accepted it. She boldly observed the beauty that the fruits of suffering may bring forth, namely, spiritual graces for those who have not yet grown to love Sum Qui Sum perfectly. St. Pio of Pietrelcina observed that Christ is in a sick man, but in a poor, sick man, He is present two times over. Blessed Teresa observed also the special spiritual power in the trials of the poor. Those who suffer the most on Earth render the greatest glory to God. Suffering, once a brand of ignominy is, in the Church, the seal of the elect.

Naturally, if one does not believe in God, this is a sick joke. Sick jokes logically make people angry when perceived as such. These angry people have enough goodness to wish their brothers in humanity the same comforts they have, and they become more furious when they see such a thing is unworkable. Alleviate poverty? Even given the possibility, what of sickness? What of accidents? Even given that such sources of misery could be eliminated, the fact that suffering persons have existed in the past and do exist in the present time, cannot be remedied.

The misery of the unmiserable is thus begotten. In more rational and active minds however, it is not content to remain a vague or even acute feeling of displeasure. A man who is constantly and increasingly unsettled by something is likely to do something about it. If he cannot accept the dripping faucet, he'll rise from bed to remedy it. Obviously, his strategy will be sound or faulty. All of man's strategies are.

If his tactics are sound, they will succeed. However, if his very project was doomed to failure from the beginning, the wholeness of his intent will not produce a good plan anymore than an unfeasible end will be gained by practicable means. His reason may have tried to work out a solution that would dispel the problem, but if he did not consider the desirability of the result itself, his means will be at best inconsequential and at worst detrimental.

The 'result' that the haters of suffering wish to achieve is of course the end of suffering itself. This should not be confused with the attempt to alleviate pain by aiding the sufferers. The project described above is the effort to destroy the very problem of pain--to create an earthly paradise.

How could anyone object to such an endeavour? Even those who naysay it's viability should surely acknowledge what a noble or pleasant dream it is? It is hard even for the Catholic to suppress indignation at the sound of grey monks warning us against such a campaign. It takes the greatest effort of Faith to accept the Cross and to kiss its splintered timber as we bear it for no other reason than that God has said to do so.

However, as we walk by Faith and not by sight, we are given visions of worlds made in man's image, that do provide a concrete, if negative, reassurance that bearing the holy rood was the right decision.

Beginning even before Malthus, and not ending with Margaret Sanger, the desire to eliminate poverty, deformity, insanity, deficiency in existence--in brief, pain--the patients themselves are often eliminated. The argument that we would emply to justify shooting a horse with a broken leg is regularly, brazenly, and coldly applied to human beings living a 'maimed' existence by men and women of the highest office. Birth control, abortion, euthanasia, contraception--all of these means of preventing or quenching life, are the answers that those miserable with misery have to offer.

Chiding the Church for preaching abstinence as the right prevention of AIDS, some atheists have recklessly promoted the use of condoms at the expense of the people suffering in Africa. Many have dared to claim that by signing a check for distributing boxes of prophylactic rubber to these unfortunates shows they care more than religious brother and sisters who have dedicated their very lives to ministering to these afflicted men, women, and children.

The pro-abortion idealogues have nothing but ad hominem smears, which they vehemently attempt to smudge against the pro-life faction. All their claims boil down to one point, and whether they own this fact is irrelevant: 'It's better for a child to die in the womb than to be born into pain. If you aren't going to give that child a happy existence, you have no business arguing that that child has the right to life in and of itself. Nor do you have the right to tell other people they should leave off the pleasure of sex if they won't provide for the life that may result. Man was born for pleasure. Do not interfere with his destiny, for some of us, as the murder of Jim Pouillon shows, are willing to kill even the post-born to achieve that destiny.'

The legally promulgated murder of Terry Shiavo, who endured the excrutiatingly slow death of dehydration and starvation, shows just how close euthanasia-on-demand is to our doorstep.

The utopian dream has materialised as a horrific nightmare. The war declared on suffering becomes war on the sufferers. Demonically comic and painfully futile, this jihad has taken hold of our age with frightening power, and no end of its campaign is in sight.

All that the soul can do is love. The love that burns with the most charity is the simplest, and fortunately there is enough of it left in this world that aid has been sent to Haiti in an attempt to stem the suffering. It is a blessing of the deepest kind, that God's ministers are also there to console the inconsolable.

Father Toussaint has given his people the same answer God gave Job. Life is good, because all things that exist are good. All things have their good in virtue of their being. The bruised apple is better than no apple; the maimed life is better than no life. Those wounded and woeful now in Haiti are at least alive and have been called to see their continuing life as a gift and to renew their trust in the Source of life.

We must not think that because we do not suffer with them that we have escaped the same call. As they say, 'Fiat voluntas Tua,' so must we. Rancour and rebelliousness is not the fitting reaction to such events. Weep, pray, fast, and give alms but then committ these souls to the Lord that loves them more than you can imagine.

Thank God for the material blessings He gives. Trust Him when they are withheld, not only in your case, but in that of others, too. Do not be uneasy on their account. Callous as that may seem, look where the indulgence of uneasiness can lead! Let Faith and Hope be your comfort and assurance that God is Love. Love never fails.

Taking up my needlework and gazing on the reverse side of my embroidery, I am reminded of an image drawn in words by St. Pio of Pietrelcina. As we gaze up at God's Plan from beneath it, we observe only haphazard threads, random lines of colours, uneven knots, and frayed plies where the threads were cut off. Like a little child gazing up at his mother's stitchery from a little stool, we see an ugly farce of a pattern. I showed my work to some twelve-year old students in catechism today. One young boy arched his brow and said with his very adult cadence, 'Did you make the other side like that on purpose?' I replied, 'I could not have helped it if I tried. I wanted to create something beautiful, and that meant strain and ugliness on the other side of the pattern.'

Perhaps my answer does not in anyway--literally or allegorically--resemble the Truth behind God's will in the event of sorrow. He does not answer us while we traverse this Earth, as He did not answer Job. When that righteous man cried out, provoked past endurance by the religious censure of his friends, he received the great Non-Answer of God. That which is transcribed below concerns the very elements that have recently and cruelly afflicted the Haitian people:

Who is this that wrappeth up sentences in unskillful words? Gird up thy loins like a man: I will ask thee, and answer thou Me. Where wast thou when I laid up the foundations of the earth? tell Me if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof, if thou knowest? or who hath stretched the line upon it? Upon what are its bases grounded? or who laid the corner stone thereof, When the morning stars praised Me together, and all the sons of God made a joyful melody? Who shut up the sea with doors, when it broke forth as issuing out of the womb: When I made a cloud the garment thereof, and wrapped it in a mist as in swaddling bands? I set my bounds around it, and made it bars and doors:

And I said: Hitherto thou shalt come, and shalt go no further, and here thou shalt break thy swelling waves. Didst thou since thy birth command the morning, and shew the dawning of the day its place? And didst thou hold the extremities of the earth shaking them, and hast thou shaken the ungodly out of it? The seal shall be restored as clay, and shall stand as a garment: From the wicked their light shall be taken away, and the high arm shall be broken.

Hast thou entered into the depths of the sea, and walked in the lowest parts of the deep? Have the gates of death been opened to thee, and hast thou seen the darksome doors? Hast thou considered the breadth of the earth? tell me, if thou knowest all things? Where is the way where light dwelleth, and where is the place of darkness: That thou mayst bring every thing to its own bounds, and understand the paths of the house thereof.

Didst thou know then that thou shouldst be born? and didst thou know the number of thy days? Hast thou entered into the storehouses of the snow, or has thou beheld the treasures of the hail: Which I have prepared for the time of the enemy, against the day of battle and war? By what way is the light spread, and heat divided upon the earth? Who gave a course to violent showers, or a way for noisy thunder:

That it should rain on the earth without man in the wilderness, where no mortal dwelleth: That it should fill the desert and desolate land, and should bring forth green grass? Who is the father of rain? or who begot the drops of dew? Out of whose womb came the ice; and the frost from heaven who hath gendered it? The waters are hardened like a stone, and the surface of the deep is congealed.

Shalt thou be able to join together the shining stars the Pleiades, or canst thou stop the turning about of Arcturus? Canst thou bring forth the day star in its time, and make the evening star to rise upon the children of the earth? Dost thou know the order of heaven, and canst thou set down the reason thereof on the earth? Canst thou lift up thy voice to the clouds, that an abundance of waters may cover thee? Canst thou send lightnings, and will they go, and will they return and say to thee: Here we are? (Job 38: 3-35)

Job rose to meet the Grace occasioned by this holy visitation. Rather than legalistically pointing out that his personal misery remains and had not been addressed, he was raised to humility. Shaken out of rumination on his fell fortune, all that exists in his being stood forth to praise the existence established by Him That Is, the great Sum Qui Sum--Being Itself. Not in the annihilation of Quietism, but in the unity God intended for all to whom He imparted life, Job humbly responds thusly:

What can I answer, who hath spoken without considering? I will lay my hand upon my mouth. One thing I have spoken, which I wish I had not said: and another, to which I shall add no more. (Job 39: 34-35)

A portion of the Haitian people seem to have taken the same route. This Sunday, many of those that could attended Mass, as I did in Poland. Unlike me, they had to hold handkerchiefs to their noses so as not to be overcome by the smell of death. Father Eric Toussaint, a priest wondrously possessing the surname of a beatified Haitian, stood in the ruins of their dead bishop's seat and said:

Why give thanks to God? Because we are here. We say 'Thank you God.' What happened is the will of God. We are in the hands of God now...I watched the destruction of the cathedral from this window. I am not dead because God has a plan for me...What happens is a sign from God, saying that we must recognize his power - we need to reinvent ourselves. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100117/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/cb_haiti_earthquake)

I cannot say that I know what it is to suffer. It takes but a brief glance on history, the lives of the saints, or today's headlines to humble any travail I may have endured. Yet, I shall not say that I do not what it is to suffer. Rather, I know what it is to not suffer. Perhaps not everyone is possessed of this condition; certainly, not every spiritual advisor is aware of it. Yet, it has spiritual temptations of its own.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky gave voice to so much of my inward resentment of reality's pains through his character Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov. Ivan attempts either to justify or elaborate his reasons for disbelieving in a benevolent god to his brother Alyosha, by arguing that even given God's inevitable triumph and promise of paradise, suffering can never be answered for. Not the whole glory of creation can blot out the travail of one single innocent:

This poor child of five was subjected to every possible torture by those cultivated parents...Then, they went to greater refinements of cruelty -- shut her up all night in the cold and frost in a privy, and because she didn't ask to be taken up at night (as though a child of five sleeping its angelic, sound sleep could be trained to wake and ask), they smeared her face and filled her mouth with excrement, and it was her mother, her mother did this...Can you understand why a little creature...should beat her little aching heart with her tiny fist in the dark and the cold, and weep her meek unresentful tears to dear, kind God to protect her? Do you understand that, friend and brother, you pious and humble novice...Without it, I am told, man could not have existed on earth, for he could not have known good and evil. Why should he know that diabolical good and evil when it costs so much? Why, the whole world of knowledge is not worth that child's prayer to dear, kind God'! (The Brothers Karamazov: Book V, Chapter 4)

Like Ivan, I have felt such resentment. There have been moments when, like he, I almost flattered myself that I loved these suffering souls more than the God who created them: 'I would never do or allow such a thing. I would tear out the hair of a mother who abused her child, scratch the eyes of a man who would dare harm one of these little ones. If I saw a hungry child and had the ability to provide, I would not withhold sustenance from him.'

Yet, stronger than the feelings of resentment towards God, was the guilt. All of the fortunate men on Earth who truly contemplate the unfortunate feel it in some form or other at some point in their lives. In some, it manifests itself in self-justification and condemnation of less fortunate. Those who are afflicted have sinned, ergo we need not pity them. Weal is for the holy, and woe is for the evil. Others take the path of Ivan Karamazov and choose to despise the World and its Creator for even allowing the problem of pain.

That guilt's spiritual agony is unrelenting at times. To breathe clean air and know the Chinese are stifled with pollution, just as many of my forbears were during the Industrial Revolution, to lie on my bed, knowing that I am secure against civil unrest and may sleep soundly, to drink my clean, safe water, to be hungry and know that my stomach will be filled in less than a day, to walk on two sound legs, to be conscious of my sound, healthy body, my educated mind, and my wholesome familial history is at times maddening!

'Why? Why am I given these things and others are not? How can I be happy when others are not allowed happiness? God, why can't you make me as miserable and wretched as they are, so they cannot lord it over me?' I choke on these last words for two reasons. The first obviously being uncertainty concerning my fortitude--my petty dread of suffering. The second being, that I realize so much of my abhorrence of the horrors plaguing humanity stems from my pride, not from my fraternal love or humility.

To my 'why', I know God will at least say this: 'I do not spare thee, because thou dost deserve it.' Therein lies the rub and the source of my discomfort. I am not childlike and cannot accept the lot God has given me or others. When I contribute aid to the needy, it is often with the greatest misery of spirit, because I refuse to accept that God knows better than I what is good for them. It is not enough to assist; I would wish to reverse their entire fortunes, to erase their pained existence from human history. Too often I have refused to accept that the great Sculptor, mercilessly chiselling on particular fine piece of marble loves that statue more than this rough-hewn block of granite looking on.

Worse still, I see where the miserable side of my 'compassion' will lead.


The Unease of the Non-Sufferer: I by Rachel Rudd is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at foolishnessntears.blogspot.com.