PAIN AND SUFFERING

As lent begins, our hearts and minds traditionally, perhaps even naturally turn to thoughts of pain and suffering, although not always in those exact terms. Lent is a time when we are called to be even more penitent than we are called to be throughout the rest of the year. Penance, penitence, you see, is a daily obligation of every Christian. Lent is the time when we are asked to be a little more focused on the subject.

The truth, sadly, is that for most of us penance is mostly an afterthought, if we even think of it at all. Thus Lent becomes (has become) a time when we are least are reminded that we think should about such practices as self-denial or doing for others what we might not normally do. We even think about doing for ourselves – and then even do. We give up some of life’s little pleasures for Lent, engage in some chosen pain and suffering or other form of penance and hope that in the process we might become steeled when pain and suffering come our way on their own.

Perhaps if we perform some form of penance throughout the year, we might not have to do during Lent – or at least make such a big deal out of it as we often do. Perhaps. Yet the fact is that pain and suffering are part of life. There are no exceptions and no one is immune. It goes with the territory, as they say. There is no escape.

How we deal with such pain and suffering is the issue. Being penitent as a way of life, doing penance of some sort on a daily basis, helps us deal with a sudden and unexpected sorrow, or at least deal with it better than we would had we always avoided pain whenever possible. That is not to say that we become masochists. It is to say that self-imposed pain, penance, is good for the soul and is a preparation to deal with a pain and sorrow that we would choose to avoid if we could but cannot.

We are never ready, of course, when such sorrows arrive. Never. No matter how strong we are, no matter how penitential our lives, when deep pain and sorrow come into our lives, we hurt and we hurt deeply. And again, no one is exempt from such pain and sorrow. Everyone, every human being experiences suffering and sorrow that is not chosen but comes from without.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once observed that “if we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man’s life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” We are all brothers and sisters when it comes to sorrow and suffering.

What we have learned, as Danish writer Isak Dinesen notes, is that “all sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them.” One of the great ways to deal with the death of a loved one is for family and friends to tell stories about them. Doing so eases the pain, which is all we can hope for at such times.

But it is those daily, and not just Lenten, acts of penance that help us through those times of pain and suffering that come unawares and unwanted. If such are not part of our daily lives, Lent is certainly a good time to begin to make them so.