The Pain that Heals

From what I have said so far, suffering must be seen as an essential ingredient of life and a necessary way for the growth of the individual into something of a full person. Keats believed that our world was a vale of soul-making; fundamentally this is true but the concept of soul-building is even more accurate inasmuch as the essence of the personality, which we call the soul, is probably already there when a child is born. Indeed, the Lord said to Jeremiah: "Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you for my own; before you were born I consecrated you" (Jeremiah 1:4). This does suggest that an essence of personal identity exists before the conception of the physical body, a view apparently more acceptable to ancient Greek thought and the Hindu and Buddhist traditions than to the great Semitic monotheistic religions, except in their more esoteric versions. The latter variants are more adventurous in their metaphysical speculations but run the risk of heretical deviation. The Holy Spirit does not, however, allow us to remain for long entrenched in a complacent attitude, for he leads us on towards a full appreciation of the truth however much we may resent his intrusion in our lives.

The progressive nature of revelation is stated categorically in John 16:12-13, when Jesus is reported as saying: "There is still much that I could say to you, but the burden would be too great for you now. However, when he comes who is the Spirit of truth, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own authority, but will tell only what he hears, and he will make known to you the things that are coming." Whatever knowledge leads mankind into a greater commitment to God and raises the material world a little closer to its spiritual reality is mediated by the Holy Spirit. Whatever boosts the ego of the individual, making him feel special and different from his fellows so that he becomes remote from the world around him, is mediated by indeterminate psychic powers. In other words, the power of the Spirit inspires a person in the direction of his true calling as a son of God who serves and suffers on behalf of his fellow creatures in the likeness of the incarnate Christ. By contrast, the forces that emanate from the purely psychic level exalt a person above his stature in life and separate him from his fellows in a void of illusion that he mistakes for spiritual reality. His end is solitary, whereas the end of the spiritually based person is in mystical union with a transfigured world in the glory of God.

St Paul says of the Spirit: "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. And because for us there is no veil over the face we all reflect as in a mirror the splendour of the Lord; thus we are transfigured into his likeness, from splendour to splendour; such is the influence of the Lord who is Spirit" (II Corinthians 3:17-18). This is especially true of the person who has traversed the path of suffering and come out on the other side in the light of a renewed life - "for this son of mine was dead, and has come back to life; he was lost and is found" (Luke 15:24). How does the life of a person who has passed over the valley of the shadow of death differ from the life he once led as an unawakened individual? The awakened person is inspired by God's spirit to love with an ardour that is out of all comparison to the passion of an unawakened sensual man. The love that most people know is a selfish emotional attachment; it is a demanding attitude that keeps the beloved bound to the desires of the one who loves. It has strongly possessive undertones, and the centre of the love is the selfish, clinging need of the lover. We all yearn for the security of a deep relationship with someone whom we like and believe we can trust, but if we are not constantly vigilant, we and the other person can become imprisoned in chains of mutual dependence. The result of the distressingly common egoistical attachment that masquerades as love is that neither individual is allowed to grow into what God has determined for him, the measure of a full person.

Of course, even those early strivings for a deeper relationship between two unaware people are not to be summarily dismissed. Even the first groping after the support of another person broadens the ego-centred limitations of an isolated existence sufficiently to embrace the concerns of another human being. This is how the individual's awareness grows in even superficial acquaintanceships, until he can form closer friendships which may find their summation in a life-long marriage relationship. But even in such a situation it is not very unusual for the two partners hardly to know one another in any depth even after a considerable number of years together. The reason for this lack of intimate communion is that neither partner has any deep knowledge of the self. Indeed, much social intercourse is conducted with the implicit purpose of shielding everyone involved from too deep an involvement with the issues that really matter. Words skilfully used can deflect us from a real experience of the other person while focussing our attention away from our own basic insecurity. Thus we skate skilfully on a smooth surface of inconsequential living until the ice cracks and we are submerged in the freezing waters of real life. This is the moment of truth when all our illusions - especially the false relationships we have shared with our fellow creatures - are shattered and we are left floundering in a sea of suffering, groping desperately for some solid support on which to cling. There is, of course, only one such source of support, the Lord of life. When we know Him, we begin the essential change for which we were created - to put off the purely human, evanescent nature and to be transformed progressively into the divine nature. The first indication of this change is a renewed love for life, but of a quality far different from anything we had previously known.

The ability to love freely and in a non-attached, transpersonal way is especially the fruit of the successful journey through psychic darkness of the intensity that Jesus experienced alone in the Garden of Gethsemane when those three disciples whom He had chosen for their special closeness to Him - Peter, James and John - slept on in uncomprehending stupor. The person who, like Jesus, emerges battered but entire from this most harrowing of all encounters with the collective power of evil, can never sleep again when even one of the least of his brethren is in distress. "I tell you this: anything you did for one of my brothers here, however humble, you did for me" (Matthew 25:40). Perhaps this reflection contrasts the love of one who has been renewed in God after losing everything that he once held important from the sporadic feelings of goodwill and charity that enter the hearts of many unawakened people during the course of their lives. To do the occasional kindly action is not only appropriate but it also lightens the burden of an ego-centred existence. To be eternally about our Father's business and in His house, as Jesus saw His work even at the age of twelve, means that the ego has been permanently and absolutely demoted from its natural seat of dominance and is now the servant of the Lord who is Spirit. It is in this spirit that Jesus' words to His self seeking disciples have an eternal meaning: "You know that in the world the recognised rulers lord it over their subjects, and their great men make them feel the weight of authority. This is not the way with you; among you, whoever wants to be great must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be the willing slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give up His life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:42-45).

The one who has emerged a changed person from the valley of suffering has passed beyond the thraldom of striving for greatness and power. Having lost everything the world holds dear, including the identity one previously had, for Christ's sake and for the Gospel, one has indeed found eternal life, which is the centre within oneself that is inviolable against all the inroads of material ruin or psychic eruption. In this respect anyone who has prevailed against the onslaught of unremitting suffering and dark despair is a messenger of God's Word and Gospel irrespective of his religious background. He has done the will of the heavenly Father and the kingdom of Heaven is his. This is not true of the arrogant type of believer who calls "Lord, Lord" vociferously but avoids any damaging involvement in the world's tragedies or in the suffering of his fellow creatures. It is to the servants of humanity, who have been changed by the refining fire of suffering, that the Son of Man will say: "You have my Father's blessing; come, enter and possess the kingdom that has been ready for you since the world was made" (Matthew 25:34). An unawakened person cannot fulfil the social and communal demands set out in the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats. Only those who have dispensed with a purely personal life and have entered the transpersonal way in God can be eternally about their Father's business - which means caring for the hungry and thirsty, the stranger and the prisoner, and all who are sick. And this caring is no mere welfare work such as is nowadays increasingly being relegated to various professional agencies. The caring of the one who is centred in God is a constant awareness of the deepest sufferings of other people, so that they are remembered in prayer when one is away from them no less than enveloped in love when one is in their bodily presence. In this respect caring for someone is not the same as loving him. Care brings resources to a person in distress; love gives oneself to him. It is impossible to love a person without caring deeply for him; in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, the central figure of the story combined love and care in the relief he afforded to the unfortunate man who had fallen among thieves on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the other hand, care can be very impersonal especially when it is meted out by agencies of social welfare and there is no impulse of love behind it. Care divested of love's ardour soon assumes the burden of a duty or even the arrogance of an act of condescension. How sad it is that most excellent word "charity", purer than many versions of love currently in use, is popularly identified with almsgiving. No wonder it is often described as cold!

Jesus made some hard demands on His disciples. After He had sent the rich young man away with the recommendation to sell all he had and give it to the poor and then to come and follow Him, a counsel of perfection that affected the youth with profound depression as he withdrew from the Master, Jesus told those around Him how impossible it was for anyone clinging to riches to enter God's kingdom. The amazement with which the disciples greeted this teaching is both amusing and salutary; it was commonly believed that wealth was a reward for good living and misfortune a punishment from God for wrongful actions. This view is still the popular one today, as is seen in the superfical teaching given by many who are involved in the ministry of healing. Jesus had compassion on the disciples when they protested against the harshness of His demands and said: "Then who can be saved?" The answer was clear and decisive: "For men it is impossible, but not for God; everything is possible for God" (Mark 10:17 27). This is the heart of the matter. Only the man who has emerged from the dark pit of suffering is able to live no more in himself but in God. To repeat St Paul's insight: "I have been crucified with Christ: the life I now live is not my life, but the life which Christ lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). This is, of course, part of a typical conversion experience, and as such has been known by many believers in their path to a full commitment to Christ. But it remains merely a dramatic presage of future glory until the life of a believer has, in the course of withering suffering, been so transformed that his personality bears the marks of the crucified Lord and shines with the light of His resurrected body. What St Paul glimpsed in the many moments of illumination that punctuated the writing of his inspired letters had to be actualised in life by his becoming a changed person, one who could see even his failure to be healed of his "thorn in the flesh" as a part of the divine plan, whose strength is made perfect in weakness. This strength in weakness was manifested once and for all time in the crucifixion of Jesus. As He descended into hell, so He initiated the release from that sordid psychic atmosphere of all those who had lain incarcerated in its hopeless, meaningless chaos of darkness since the creation of the world.

When one ponders on these sombre yet liberating thoughts, so the paradox of the suffering servant described in Isaiah 53 approaches an existential solution: by this I mean a solution based on the experience of common life, not on metaphysical speculations. Indeed, I suspect that the well-meaning agnostic philosophers of our world inhabit their special domain on the periphery of heaven but outside its bounds, where they continue to argue interminably about the meaning of life and the existence of God. Only those who have found a meaning to their lives in surmounting the suffering of the created universe will know indisputably that God does indeed exist. And they will know Him eternally in the atmosphere of Heaven, not only as an intimate personal presence beyond definition but also as the boundless, timeless expanse of unitive love in which all creation lives and moves and has its being.

In Isaiah 53 we read: "He grew up before the Lord like a young plant whose roots are in parched ground; he had no beauty, no majesty to draw our eyes, no grace to make us delight in him; his form, disfigured, lost all the likeness of a man, his beauty changed beyond all human semblance. He was despised, he shrank from the sight of men, tormented and humbled by suffering; we despised him, we held him of no account, a thing from which men turn away their eyes. Yet on himself he bore our sufferings, our torments he endured, while we counted him smitten by God, struck down by disease and misery; but he was pierced for our transgressions, tortured for our iniquities; the chastisement he bore is health for us and by his scourging we are healed" (verses 2-5). The important point to realise about this famous passage, one of the greatest insights into the nature of God that has ever entered the imagination of a human mind, is that the servant on whom all suffering is poured is the most privileged of men. He, in identifying himself with the sores and dregs of life, has been identified with God also, who entered fully into the world at the moment His Word uttered the creative command, and who entered personally into the darkest tragedy of life at the time of the Incarnation of Christ. It was for this very end that man was created: to raise up all that is mortal in our world to immortality, all that is corrupt to incorruption. But to perform this act of transfiguration the master has to become the servant; indeed lower than the most menial slave, he has to identify himself with mortality and corruption sufficiently to love it and die for it. Only then does the process of healing begin. And the servant is resurrected into life eternal as he raises up the dead and glorifies the sordid dregs of degraded humanity.

This is the real ministry of healing. It is strongly related to the Sacrament of Baptism. As St Paul reminded his Roman brethren: "Have you not forgotten that when we were baptised into union with Jesus Christ we were baptised into His death? By baptism we were buried with Him, and lay dead in order that, as Christ was raised from the dead in the splendour of the Father, so also we might set our feet upon the new path of life" (Romans 6:3-4). Jesus reminds His followers of the supreme baptism when they look for honours in the world to come: "Can you drink the cup that I drink, or be baptised with the baptism I am baptised with?" (Mark 10:38). The disciples affirm that they can, and indeed they prove it in their subsequent ministry, but they little knew what they were assuming when they made their first declaration of fidelity. They first had to experience disillusionment, despair, a full knowledge of their own wretchedness in their rejection of their Master when He needed them most, and then the forgiveness that comes as grace from God. Only then could they follow in the way and be filled with the Holy Spirit to do the great work of continuing Jesus' mission to the world. In this way what is presented first to the newly-fledged believer as a sacrament of death and resurrection is finally fulfilled in his own life as experience of personal death and spiritual resurrection. Only the resurrected one can be a full instrument of the healing power of God's Spirit.

When one suffers on behalf of someone else, one takes his burden on oneself and lifts it up to God. The Holy Spirit flows into the soul of the one who offers himself as a sacrifice for the world, and transforms both the burden and the one who has chosen the way of self-giving. To be the instrument of transfiguring the pain of the world into joy means that every base, mean, selfish impulse in one's own life must first be similarly transfigured. It is the cold wind and acrid stench of psychic darkness that cleanses one prior to the act of transfiguration, which is effected by the Holy Spirit penetrating the very marrow of one's being. As one is changed from the previously conventionally respectable figure in the world's eyes to something that is unmentionably foul, so a new type of beauty permeates one's being, a beauty seen outwardly in the stigmata of Christ and inwardly as a transfiguring radiance which embraces the whole creation, having nothing outside its orbit, nothing isolated or rejected. Indeed, we are all healed as a result of his scourging.

An intimation of this universal healing has been given by some people who have passed through hell and emerged unscathed in inner integrity. I am always reminded of a particular prayer that was found on a piece of wrapping paper near the body of a dead child in Ravensbruck Nazi Concentration Camp, where it is estimated that 92,000 women and children died;

In this almost unbearably moving testament of forgiveness, we can glimpse the inner meaning of the doctrine of the Atonement. In some respects this document, written almost certainly by one who was not a Christian, comes closer to the heart of the mystery of this doctrine than either the "satisfaction" theory of St Anselm or the "substitution" theory of John Calvin, because its centre is pure love without the demand for justice (on the human level) to be satisfied. Of course, the sacrifice of himself this transfigured person in the prison camp freely gave is not of the same order as that prophesied in Isaiah 53 with regard to the suffering servant or manifested by Christ in His death and passion. For those latter two were completely sinless, being infused with the presence of God, whereas even the noblest victim of the prison camps of our own time would have confessed to many shortcomings prior to the terrible ordeal that so transformed him. But the essential quality he would share with Jesus is that of offering himself without reservation in order to save the wicked from the fruits of their own destructive actions. Once they have been so saved, I believe the wicked would, like the Prodigal Son, come to themselves and start a new life of service to God and love to their fellows, whether in this world or in the greater life beyond death. It is this trust in the ultimately redeeming power of love that convinces me that everything in the creative process will come to its own fulfilment in God, transfigured and resurrected.

Only when one has been through the hell that Jesus endured and emerged transfigured, can one appreciate and bear with Christ the hell of another person. Even if one has not undergone exactly the same experience as He has, one is still fully conscious of the intense pain that underlies it, and one can at least share it with him. Carl Jung said on one occasion that only the wounded surgeon heals. This is especially true of those who, in their own form, bear the stigmata of the Lord. Jesus experienced every psychic hell known to man in the Gethsemane experience. Later on the cross at Golgotha He was to partake of extreme physical agony also. It is in this way that His presence is with everyone who suffers; the individual situation varies but the underlying pain, dread, despair and spiritual obfuscation are shared in common.

Blaise Pascal wrote: "Jesus will be in agony until the end of the world: all that time we must not sleep" (Pensée 736). His vigil and ours - unlike His three sleeping disciples - will continue until every sentient creature is relieved of pain and distress so that it too can enter the heavenly bliss of God's presence with us. So close is all life in solidarity that no individual can pass beyond the point of no return to suffering while even a single tiny creature is in distress. In one esoteric Buddhist text, the Bodhisattva (the Enlightened One who has passed beyond the wheel of rebirth and can now enter the eternal bliss of Nirvana) hears these words: "Can there be bliss when all that lives must suffer? Shalt thou be saved and hear the whole world cry?" (This comes from the Book of the Golden Precepts in an annotated version entitled The Voice of the Silence). He renounces Nirvana until all beings can enter into its bliss with him, when indeed the world of becoming (Samsara) and the world of reality (Nirvana) are one. What the highest Buddhist intuition recognised as the ultimate truth of renunciation was realised by the crucified Christ. At this point these two great spiritual traditions merge, fuse and become one in the Godhead, which is beyond all names and concepts.

It is not infrequently asserted by students of the occult that so great a Master as Jesus need not have suffered pain or despair on the cross. Surely He was also a master of psychical, occult techniques by which He could have lifted His consciousness from the agony of his body to the bliss of His spiritual nature. Whether or not He knew of such techniques is neither here nor there; one thing is, however, certain. It was contingent upon Him to identify Himself completely with His human brethren. Only by bearing their pain could He enter fully into the lives of even the most menial, degraded people. And following this complete identification with mankind at its most sordid and tragic, Jesus is eternally available to bear the suffering of all who work in obscure faith and are open to the inflow of divine grace even when, like Jesus on the cross, they call out, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?"

This statement of the necessity for bearing the pain of all creation is not to be seen as a self-indulgent revelling in suffering and humiliation. It is well known that some psychologically disturbed people get considerable satisfaction from their misery. This state of masochism has unconscious sexual roots, and is clearly an attitude of mind that is to be deprecated. Furthermore, it is possible to escape life's present demands by relapsing into ill-health or emotional instability. The hysterical type of person uses this way of escape, albeit unconsciously, whenever confronted with a severe test of present decision or endurance. As was recorded in John 5:1-9, when a certain man who had been crippled for thirty-eight years but had never been able to enter the healing waters of Bethesda in time, was confronted by Jesus, he was asked quite directly: Do you want to recover?" Jesus obviously divined a basic ambivalence in the crippled man's attitude to being healthy once more. He had to make the decision, as we all must do in our crises. God does not thrust health on us any more than suffering. It is part of the life we have been given that we should participate in both these experiences, but if we are open to God, our inevitable periods of darkness will be blessed by the presence of the suffering Christ, so that we may emerge from the deep pit of pain stronger, more compassionate, and a little closer to the likeness of our Lord. It is only then that we will know the resurrected Christ, who will be the agent of an even more splendid outwardly manifested healing. Of course, the way of suffering and the experience of healing are essentially dual aspects of the path of human endeavour, just as the suffering Christ is the same person as the resurrected Lord.

The way of courageous suffering leads to a new life in God. Morbid, introspective suffering can be a very effective way of evading the challenge of life to know ourselves as we really are. It can be a way, not so very different in its final effect of averting the gaze of the individual from the true self, that is accomplished more frequently and pleasurably by superficial entertainment, shallow conversation and sensual stimulation. The person who can bear the suffering of another is not a sentimentalist who flows out in words of sympathy. Such an approach can lead to both of them wallowing in the pain and injustice of life and perhaps feeling superior to those who do not suffer. To bear another's pain means to be constantly present in thought and prayer, silent except when moved to speak by the Holy Spirit, always aware of the depth of distress and yet even more conscious of the power and light of God, who rules omnipotently in all worlds and over all situations. Such a person suffers vicariously, and in taking on the victim's burdens gives them to God in prayer. And God transfigures both the victim and the intercessor while changing the burden from an unbearable tragedy to a presage of triumph.

There are some people engaged in a healing ministry who claim such a degree of psychic rapport with those on whom they bestow their healing gift that they feel they pick up the diseased condition of their patient. They experience pain, perhaps in a similar area of the body to that of the patient. If these claims are factually true, and a healthy agnosticism is essential in their evaluation, they simply point to a close psychic sensitivity on the part of the agent of healing. In themselves they are neither indications of special spirituality nor do they necessarily help the other person. Indeed, they can be dangerous both in depleting the health of the one who ministers healing and in inflating his ego. This psychic sensitivity is not to be equated with vicarious suffering, though the one who does suffer for another will assuredly be in the closest psychic communion with him. This is an interesting example of both the connection between the psychic and spiritual dimensions of relationship and their great difference. Psychic sensitivity, if it is not inspired by God, merely brings two people into a close emotional relationship which may just as easily be destructive as healing. But the one who is the true agent of vicarious suffering has been so changed through his own deep experience of hell and resurrection that he has, as it were, left his ego behind and is a pure servant of God. To quote St Paul for a third time: "I have been crucified with Christ: the life I now live is not my life, but the life which Christ lives in me" (Galatians 2:20). This is the life of vicarious suffering. By that life others are truly brought into healing relationship with God.

The meaning of this change to divine consciousness is brought out in a famous passage from the Letter to the Hebrews (5:7-10), which refers to the suffering of Christ that was a necessary precursor of His subsequent glorification. "In the days of His earthly life He offered up prayers and petitions, with loud cries and tears, to God who was able to deliver Him from the grave. Because of His humble submission, His prayer was heard: Son though He was, He learned obedience in the school of suffering, and once perfected, became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey Him, named by God high priest in the succession of Melchizedek." Even Jesus, though of divine nature, had to have His humanity perfected in the school of suffering, which is the everyday world where the common people lead their alternatively depressing, boring, depraved and heroic lives. The end of this process of perfection was begun in Gethsemane and brought to a triumphant conclusion in the underworld of hell. The means to this end was unremitting love. In weakness the strength of God was shown to the world, and in love death was overcome in victory. The heart of this is unreserved forgiveness.

It is in giving of oneself freely that one begins to learn who one really is: a child of God created in the image of the God-man Jesus Christ. The end of this self-knowledge is the raising of all life to the likeness of God through the mediation of Christ. God became man in order that man might become God, as St Athanasius put it so succinctly and perfectly.