Lenten Day Thirty-five: Henri Nouwen

Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. – Henri Nouwen

On this Monday of Holy Week, suffering is an appropriate theme as we move toward the cross of Good Friday.  God knows there is enough suffering around the world.  God knows there is enough of it in our own personal lives. God knows that Henri Nouwen, a Dutch Catholic priest, professor, writer, and theologian, knew suffering well.  And God knows how Nouwen used his own suffering, his own wounds, in loving service to those around him.  Nouwen’s suffering became a blessing.

The entire quotation reads:

Suffering invites us to place our hurts in larger hands. In Christ we see God suffering – for us. And calling us to share in God’s suffering love for a hurting world. The small and even overpowering pains of our lives are intimately connected with the greater pains of Christ.

I believe that, to God, nothing in life is wasted, that God can use our suffering, whatever it is (and if we are agreeable) for the greater good.

When I reflect on the gospels, I do not see a god that promises us a rose garden, ever.  Instead, I see a God that clearly explains that yes, there will be suffering in the world.  Why?  Because we live in a broken world and we continue to break it.  When I reflect on the gospels, I do not see a god that passes by those who suffer or turns his head the other way.  Instead, I see a God who notices the suffering of others and who joins them in that suffering.  I see a God who, once resurrected, continues to bear the scars of suffering as a reminder and an invitation to join our suffering with God’s, to trust that somehow the darkest moments and the sharpest pain will be used in a way that heals, redeems, and even resurrects.

As a priest, Nouwen struggled with his own homosexuality most of his adult life.  He used his suffering to serve others who were considered “less than”—the mentally and physically impaired adults at L’Arche Daybreak in Canada where he spent the last ten years of his life and found not only was he a blessing, but he was also blessed. He became the living embodiment of his own phrase (and book) “the wounded healer.”  Until we have been wounded, until we have suffered, we really cannot understand, or even emulate, Jesus Christ.  Brennan Manning was bold enough to say that “the unwounded life bears no resemblance to Jesus the Rabbi.”  The poet Mary Oliver wrote:  “Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this too, was a gift.”

No one wants to suffer.  No one hopes that maybe today we will get to suffer.  Yet suffering is part of life. It does and will happen to all of us.  No one gets a “Get out of suffering card free.” Yet on this Monday, we can remember that suffering is the universal cord that binds us to one another and we can trust that whatever suffering we bear is being borne also by the Universal Christ.  We can give thanks for hearts that have become compassionate, that still are open to feeling the pain of others, that still will weep, that mold us more and more into the image of Love.

Blessings ~ Rosemary