On Suffering

Father,

Thank you for making yourself available for my questions with respect to your Homily from last week, Sunday 8/24. Apologies for the delinquency of my follow up – I wanted to take some time to gather my thoughts and let the message marinate.

First, I wanted to briefly introduce myself: my name is Peter Murphy, I'm twenty five years old, I moved to Charlotte about three and a half years ago from Northern Virginia, and have been a parishioner of <my church> for most of that time (I bounced around between <some church> and <another church> before finding <my church>, which feels the most like home). Facing the altar, I tend to sit on the right side of the Church, whereas you administer the Eucharist on the opposite side, hence not recognizing me – but I also wholly shoulder the blame for not introducing myself sooner, sorry about that!

I was raised in the church, receiving the sacraments of First Communion, Reconciliation, and Confirmation –and being an altar server– all at St. Louis Parish up in NOVA. I don't recall off the top of my head where I was baptized but I think it was included on the registration questionnaire to officially join <my church>. Before moving down to Charlotte for work after finishing up undergrad at Virginia Tech, I was homeschooled by my mother who I'd like to think (as I'm sure she would like as well) instilled a good foundation for Catholic morality on my two brothers and I. She dispatched the three of us to Bishop Ireton in Alexandria, VA for high school education which continued to challenge me and my beliefs. I was told that I was a pleasure to have in class (sarcastically), as my approach to spirituality at the time was far more rigid and argumentative i.e. “If you can't prove to me why what you're saying is true, then I won't believe you.” This sort of perverse Socratic method served me well in my engineering studies later, but it was (and still is) wanting in the ways of answering questions about theology and faith. I share this reflection to hopefully impart some degree of self-awareness, empathizing with what it's probably like to be hostilely confronted by some hotshot, edgy kid who's not arguing in good faith, but rather trying to bend a spiritual outlook to fit an a priori hedonic and confused lifestyle of a rebellious teenager.

I'd like to think that I've matured at least a little bit since then and am coming to you with these questions and internal moral quandaries with an open-minded desire to be convinced, to have my spiritual outlook enlarged, corrected, whatever necessary –or borrowing the mindset from the Socratic framework: to be proved wrong– for I deeply respect and appreciate the care with which you curate and deliver your messages from the pulpit. These days, rather than looking for reasons to disagree with Church teachings, I find those points of friction to be the most beneficial for me to think about, meditate and pray upon, as the degree to which I take issue with some Church teaching is usually a reflection of my own spiritual fitness (or lack thereof), rather than a measure of the correctness of doctrine or theology.

Longwinded preface to say: I'm not trying to “dunk” on you, or the saints, or anything like that – I want to better understand what St. Rose of Lima's message with respect to suffering means for a mid-twenties kid who should probably clean up his side of the street before throwing stones at the teachings of literal SAINTS and priests such as yourself.

I am of course not asking you to respond to every detail of my “argument” reproduced here, but I figured it would be better to offer more for you to work with than less. In short, the idea which I've found so troubling in the past week was that of St. Rose's in regards to suffering: “This [suffering] is the only true stairway to paradise, and without the cross they can find no road to climb to Heaven.” I think that St. Rose's implications about a causal relationship between suffering and grace is wrong bordering on harmful – and this is what I'd like some clarity or perspective on from you.

As another tangential aside to color in my own perspective on the theological value of suffering, I'll introduce two other perspectives on the subject which bookend the spectrum of theological outlooks in my mind: with Viktor Frankl and JP II on one end, and Emil Cioran on the other.

Frankl, author of Man's Search for Meaning (1946), was a holocaust survivor who went on to develop a school of psychotherapy he called logotherapy, intending to link general health to one's sense of meaning. I found his book recounting his and his fellows' experiences in the Nazi death camps to offer a profoundly helpful outlook on suffering through a spiritual lens. Some representative quotations of his include:

But these moments of comfort do not establish the will to live unless they help the prisoner make larger sense out of his apparently senseless suffering. It is here that we encounter the central theme of existentialism: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering. If there is a purpose in life at all, there must be a purpose in suffering and in dying. But no man can tell another what this purpose is. Each must find out for himself, and must accept the responsibility that his answer prescribes. If he succeeds he will continue to grow in spite of all indignities. Frankl is fond of quoting Nietzsche, 'He who has a why to live can bear with almost any how.¹'

and

If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

Here, I think Frankl correctly identifies the inevitably of suffering: suffering with grace is aspirational, and something I've been shamefully incapable of at crucial moments in my/my family's own tribulations.

Dostoevski said once, ‘There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings.' These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom—which cannot be taken away—that makes life meaningful and purposeful.

Here, I think Frankl correctly points out that there is a unique emergent purpose or fulfillment which can only be attained through suffering: suffering well or gracefully, and if I could take the liberty to read in some Christian theology where Frankl might cast a wider net: as a reflection of Christ's own suffering on the cross, though he does explicitly use that imagery elsewhere:

The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity—even under the most difficult circumstances—to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may [sic be to?] remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal.

In the above passage though, he is precise about using the word “opportunity” instead of obligation or any other phrase which confers agency to us, as the sufferer, to exact this catalyst deeper meaning (which I again read as an opportunity to experience God's grace).

I considered as well the life and teachings of Pope Saint John Paul II whose radically optimistic outlook on life which he brought to the face of the Church was born out of exposure to the exact same monstrosities of the twentieth century at the hands of the Axis powers. Both these men were subjected to (not voluntarily, obviously) suffering on a scale and degree to which was hitherto unimaginable. Contrast these saintly views on suffering to those of the jaded sceptic Emil Cioran.

Incidentally, Cioran's Lacrimi şi sfinţi (1937) was my first memorable encounter with St. Rose (I'm sure she was mentioned in Catholic School, but admittedly my head was in the sand; more concerned with Smirnoff than with saints), and I rather despised his characterization of the lives of the saints. If you're not familiar with Cioran, don't bother! He was a Romanian philosopher/polemist writing in the interwar period who seemed rather depressed and misrepresented the lives of the saints for his own nihilistic ends. E.g.

You are lost if saints don't disgust you.

Nietzsche's greatest merit is that he knew how to defend himself from saintliness.

To be a saint, never miss a single opportunity among the infinite varieties of suffering.

As Margaret Mary Alacoque used to say,we have hoisted ourselves to God's level.

Notable excerpts from this book, which do now find some purchase among the quotations of our own St. Rose, include:

Rose of Lima, born in South America apparently to redeem Pizarro's crimes, is a model for all those with a vocation for suffering. Young and beautiful, she could not think of an excuse to resist her mother's wish to bring her out in society. But she finally found a compromise. Under the crown of flowers on her head she pinned a needle that pricked her forehead incessantly. Thus she satisfied her desire to be alone in society.

Rose of Lima never slept more than two hours a night, and when she felt that sleep was overpowering her, she would hang herself on a cross in her room, or force herself to stand by tying her hair to a nail.

Rose of Lima also used to wear under her veil a crown of nails that wounded her at every movement. They say that once her father touched her head accidentally and streams of blood flowed from her wounds.

Together with the rest of the seemingly-cherry-picked hagiographical tidbits from the other saints who received similarly bad-faith/disengenuous treatment from Cioran, as well as the uniformly irreverent tone throughout his manifesto, I dismissed his thoughts on the matter without much thought until St. Rose's name popped up again last Sunday and I found myself grappling in my pew with a similar brand of arguments that Cioran advanced in response to the challenging message presented in the Homily. And again, I cannot stress how fruitful of a message it has been for me this past week – if only to force me to solidify and articulate my own beliefs on the matter.

Lastly in my extracurricular taxonomy on suffering, I would be remiss if I omitted one of my favorite quotations in all literature which is

MY BROTHER HURTS. I SHARE HIS PAIN. I MEET GOD IN HIM.

which is from The Exorcist – and it's not lost on me that all of my supporting sources of influence thus far are from a Jew, an atheist, and a pop-horror author.

Finally, we come to St. Rose of Lima herself, and apply the above foundation I've arranged for understanding suffering and its relationship to grace. Some of the quotations which I believe you referenced or mentioned explicitly in your Homily include:

Without the burden of afflictions it is impossible to reach the height of grace.

This is the only true stairway to paradise, and without the cross they can find no road to climb to Heaven.

That the only path to salvation is through suffering seems harmful enough a message as is, and when combined with biographical facts about St. Rose's efforts to go out of her way to experience suffering, I struggle to find a reading which isn't masochistic in nature.

We cannot obtain grace unless we suffer afflictions. We must heap trouble upon trouble to attain a deep participation in the divine nature, the glory of the sons of God and perfect happiness of soul.

And this third one seems the most problematic in terms of a mischaracterization of the causal relationship between suffering and grace. I reach for a rebuttal using Frankl's language: that suffering is an inevitability, but doing so with grace can be a reflection of God working in our lives. Suffering as a prerequisite for the height of grace, though, seems like a dangerous message. Oughtn't our part be to seek guidance from God and the Church in times of suffering to endure those tribulations with grace and as a channel of God's peace and love? Not to inflict “trouble upon trouble” on ourselves or others with our perhaps-needless or performative suffering? Whereas I want to read these passages as some sort of comforting message that we will be able to achieve the height of grace through the inevitability of suffering, it seems as though St. Rose is suggesting some sort of transactional mentality wherein we inflict harm on ourselves in order to receive grace. I know that this is not the case, for the Catechism teaches us that grace is a gift/favor freely given by God and undeserved. Not a boon to be exploited by self-flagellation.

I think the idea might be that suffering ought to be viewed as an opportunity to receive grace, but that opportunity which may be synonymous with the dispensation of grace itself must then be, by definition of grace, freely bestowed upon us by God, not something that we bring about or deserve (getting into the business of deciding whether or not a given instance of suffering is deserved seems like murky theological territory that I'd hesitate to speculate upon to the likes of Frankl, his compatriots, or JP II…). I vastly preferred your addendum to these quotations, interweaving them into the liturgy from that Sunday which I think gets the causal relationship right: Suffering is a gift of grace. Suffering as an opportunity (freely given and perhaps equally undeserved).

Having gone back through parts of Cioran and reading more about St. Rose while writing this email, I can't help but think that his characterization of suffering is actually closer to her own perception of the utility of suffering than the outlook of someone who strikes me as more aspirational like JP II or Frankl… I'm left thinking that surely the end goal cannot be suffering for the sake of suffering?

What do you think? Am I misreading St. Rose, cherrypicking in a similar fashion as Cioran? Misreading the Catechism with respect to the notion of grace? Is my heart in the wrong place? These sound like leading questions, but I mean them as humbly and as earnestly as a “hotshot edgy mid-twenties kid” can.

And I promise this is the last inquiry (for this email at least). I also noticed that you concluded the Homily with a petition for prayers of mourning over the loss of the celebration of the Latin Mass. I remember this being a controversial announcement several years back and am only just now hearing about its actual implementation here in our diocese. I'm curious how to reconcile, on the one hand, a prayer of mourning for something presumed to be good –the Latin Mass– with adherence to the thing –the institutional force of the Church writ large– which is doing away with it.

If the Latin Mass deserves prayers of mourning, it must be good. If it's good, why do away with it?

(And I can already hear in these lines of reasoning the snarky and rigidly logical tone of argument, setting you up for a “gotcha.” If you've made it this far, please continue to be patient with my antagonistic tone for a few sentences more hahaha).

Before firing off several more paragraphs into your inbox about the Latin mass, I figured I could do some reading to expand my own familiarity on the subject. I googled “Why did Pope Francis get rid of the Latin Mass ”and the top article which popped up was from the Catholic Herald in 2021 titled “Four reasons Francis had to restrict the traditional Latin Mass.” And lo' a 1 minute read absent of any reasons. I chuckled:

I'm sure the fact that it's only being realized now some four years later is evidence enough that it was a hotly contested subject across the Church Universal for the past several years, certainly not one I've been sufficiently paying attention to. I was thinking to myself “well that's dumb, why would we follow this rule if it doesn't suit our expression of faith and communion.” Immediately followed by joking to myself about how we have a phrase for Catholics who take Church teachings piecemeal: they're called Protestants.

Thank you in advance for the consideration, I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Peter Murphy