Over lent I was blessed to use the devotional created by Susan De Bartoli, "Carry the Cross with Padre Pio".
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| My lenten devotional this year |
I wasn't planning on this lent being a foray into a deeper understanding of redemptive suffering, but apparently God had other plans. This book was given to me freely at the Parish where I attend daily Mass.
Add to this the video of The 21 that was shared with my by my friend and my required classroom assignment of "He Leadeth Me" by Fr. Walter Ciszak and you can see that perhaps the Lord was intentionally leading me to consider how love and suffering mix.
Love and suffering do mix linguistically at least. Take the word 'passion' for example. Its Latin roots indicate suffering, as in "The Passion of The Christ". However our current use of the word is more about our love for something or someone. We are passionately in love or I may have a passion for helping people find freedom from addictions.
Dig a little deeper however and one learns that love does crazy things, and I'm not just talking about the antics depicted in the much loved rom-com "Crazy, Stupid Love". Consider rather the extremes that Ivy goes through to save the life of her loved one in “The Village”: A girl blind, chased by a malicious being, traveling through a forest to fetch medicine to save a loved one’s life.
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| Ivy demonstrates CRAZY love in M. Night Shyamalan’s “The Village” |
Consider what Ivy’s father Edward says about the love that drives Ivy to do such an astonishingly brave thing:
“She is more capable than most in this village. And she is led by love. The world moves for love. It kneels before it in awe.”
It is the same crazy love that impelled Christ to embrace the Cross, scorning its shame. Indeed, millions kneel before such a demonstration of love daily even today. Consider the words of Pope Benedict XVI on the matter:
On the Cross, God’s eros for us is made manifest. Eros is indeed — as Pseudo-Dionysius expresses it — that force “that does not allow the lover to remain in himself but moves him to become one with the beloved” (“De divinis nominibus”, IV, 13: PG 3, 712). Is there more “mad eros” (N. Cabasilas, “Vita in Cristo”, 648) than that which led the Son of God to make himself one with us even to the point of suffering as his own the consequences of our offences?
Dear brothers and sisters, let us look at Christ pierced in the cross! He is the unsurpassing revelation of God’s love, a love in which eros and agape, far from being opposed, enlighten each other. On the cross, it is God himself who begs the love of his creature: he is thirsty for the love of every one of us.—Pope Benedict XVI, Lent 2007, “Love Letter”
(From an excellent article in Aleteia, I highly recommend it.)
Then Fulton Sheen goes even further than St. Augustine on the issue and calls the cross of Christ a nuptial bed! What on earth is going on here?
“This heart of mine is Yours… my Jesus, so take this heart, fill it with your love and then order me to do whatever You wish.” -p. 13.
“Remember that God is inside of us when we are in the state of His grace, and outside of us when we are in grievous sin; but His angel never abandons us. He is our most sincere and trusted friend even when through our fault, we sadden him with our bad behavior.” -p. 16
“You must speak to Jesus with the heart, besides with the lips. Indeed, in certain cases, you must speak to Him only with your heart.” -p. 38.
“Let us always keep before our eyes the fact that here on earth we are on a battlefield and that in paradise we shall receive the crown of victory; that this is a testing-ground, and the prize will be awarded up above; that we are now in a land of exile while our true homeland is in Heaven to which we must continually aspire.” -p. 41.
“How could the Mother of Jesus, who stood at Calvary’s foot, offering her Son for our salvation, not be present at the foot of the mystical Calvary of the altar?” -p. 46.
“May the Most Holy Virgin, who was the first to practice the gospel perfectly and in all its severity, even before it was proclaimed, spur us on to follow closely in her footsteps.” -p. 46.
“In our thoughts and in confession, we must not dwell on sins that were previously confessed. Because of our contrition, Jesus forgave them at the tribunal of penitence. It was there that He faced us and our destitution, like a creditor standing before an insolvent debtor. With a gesture of infinite generosity, He tore up and destroyed the promissory notes which we signed with our sins, and which we would certainly not have been able to pay without the help of His Divine clemency.” -p. 50.
“Follow the Divine Master up the steep slope of Calvary, loaded with our cross, and when it pleases him to place us on the cross…let us thank him and consider ourselves lucky to be honored in this way, aware that to be on the cross with Jesus is infinitely more perfect than merely contemplating [Him] on the Cross.” -p. 56.
“In all the events of life, you must recognize the Divine will. Adore and bless it, especially in the things which are the hardest for you.” -p. 71
“Let us, therefore, love to quench our thirst at this fountain of living water and go forward all the time along the way of divine love. But let us also be convinced that our souls will never be satisfied here below. In fact it would be disastrous for us if, at a certain stage or our journey, we were to feel satisfied, for it would be a sign that we thought we had reached our goal, and in this we would be deceived.” -p. 98.
“Don’t be afraid, then, that iniquity, will triumph over virtue. Iniquity will crush itself and justice will triumph.” -p. 129
“Your tears were collected by the angels and were placed in a golden chalice, and you will find them when you present yourself to God.” -p. 134.
“The enemy of our salvation knows only too well that peace of heart is a sure sign of the divine assistance, and hence he lets slip no opportunity to make us lose this peace. We must therefore always be on our guard in this respect. Jesus will help us.” -p. 138
“The more you are afflicted, the more you ought to rejoice, because in the fire of tribulation the soul will become pure gold, worthy to be placed and to shine in the heavenly palace.” -p. 146.
For me at least, these beautiful insights offset the more distressing passages, like the one where Jesus instructs angels to inflict suffering on some souls while being tender to others. Susan the author sums that passage up:
“In a divine vision, Jesus interacted with three suffering individuals: one received close comfort, another endured indifferent treatment with humility, and the third remained steadfast despite severe affliction. Jesus explained that their responses reflected their spiritual states: one needed affection, another encouragement, and the third was deeply devoted despite affliction.” -p. 134
As a follower of the little way of St. Therese I am the one needing affection and encouragement most of the time (see a prayer inspired by St. Therese’s here). After my journey through some of Padre Pio’s letters this lent however I am starting to understand how crazy love can cause us to desire to suffer with our loved ones and the God we love who suffers in a lovesick way for humanity.
