+JMJ+
It is understandable and commendable that you recognize you want to be happy amidst all your troubles. That is, after all, the end of all human activity and thus of all religion. “Man cannot live without joy,” St. Thomas Aquinas said. It is the God-given drive in your soul to want to be happy, so much so that you would do anything to be happy amidst our sufferings.
Our religion gives us a unique advantage over others in finding happiness amidst sufferiing. Fr. Henri Nouwen voiced out in his book The Inner Voice of Love that the healing of one’s pain is not to run away from it, nor just to own it, but to move through and beyond it.
Still, as long as you keep pointing to the specifics, you will miss the full meaning of your pain. You will deceive yourself into believing that if the people, circumstances, and events had been different, your pain would not exist. This might be partly true, but the deeper truth is that the situation which brought about your pain was simply the form in which you came in touch with the human condition of suffering. Your pain is the concrete way in which you participate in the pain of humanity.
Paradoxically, therefore, healing means moving from your pain to the pain. When you keep focusing on the specific circumstances of your pain, you easily become angry, resentful, and even vindictive. You are inclined to do something about the externals of your pain in order to relieve it; this explains why you often seek revenge. But real healing comes from realizing that your own particular pain is a share in humanity’s pain. That realization allows you to forgive your enemies and enter into a truly compassionate life…
Every time you can shift your attention away from the external situation that caused your pain and focus on the pain of humanity in which you participate, your suffering becomes easier to bear. It becomes a “light burden”and an “easy yoke”(Matthew 11: 30). Once you discover that you are called to live in solidarity with the hungry, the homeless, the prisoners, the refugees, the sick, and the dying, your very personal pain begins to be converted into the pain and you find new strength to live it. Herein lies the hope of all Christians.
Christians are able to do this because of Jesus’ Sorrowful Passion. Because Jesus is God, He can, and He has, made His one Suffering eternal, enabling us to connect and join our suffering with His. This has tremendous implications for us, since this means that our sufferings can be offered for the salvation of the world. This is redemptive suffering
CCC 1505 Moved by so much suffering Christ not only allows himself to be touched by the sick, but he makes their miseries his own: “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.” But he did not heal all the sick. His healings were signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God. They announced a more radical healing: the victory over sin and death through his Passover. On the cross Christ took upon himself the whole weight of evil and took away the “sin of the world,” of which illness is only a consequence. By his passion and death on the cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering: it can henceforth configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive Passion.
So what can we infer from these conclusions?
Firstly, and very importantly, our sufferings are meant to be shared. We are never meant to suffer alone, but we are meant to help each other out that we may strengthen and heal each other. We are not just believers, we are the Church, the body of Christ. “As iron sharpens iron, so does one person sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17). That is why we need trusted friends that we can tell our sufferings, and if needed we may have to go to professionals such as counselors, psychologists and psychiatrists to help us. Have you ever considered getting these types of services?
And yet, even in times where we have no choice but to suffer alone, we never need to suffer alone, when we offer up our sufferings to God and make our pain to the pain.
Secondly, the Sacraments are especially needed for us to overcome suffering, especially the Holy Eucharist. It is the Holy Eucharist that Jesus instituted that allows us to connect to His Suffering.
Thirdly, as recommended by the Church, the Sacraments must be supplemented by the traditional penitential practices of prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. In particular, a prayer life that focuses on the Passion of Christ can be of immense help. I heartily recommend the Devotion to the Divine Mercy, at the very least the Chaplet to the Divine Mercy.
Personally, I pray the Chaplet to the Divine Mercy a bit differently. When on the small beads instead of praying
For the sake of His Sorrowful Passion, have mercy on us and on the whole world
I pray
For the sake of Our Sorrowful Passion…
Thus I make my sufferings one with Jesus’ own sufferings for the redemption of the world, yet I keep in my mind the capitalizations “Our Sorrowful Passion” to emphasize the infinite primacy of Christ’s sufferings. In fact, this is now my most frequent ejaculation whenever I encounter any suffering and difficulty.
Finally and most vitally, Christians are not only joyful in spite of their sorrows; they actually can be joyful because of their sorrows. There are many saints that can attest to this, those whose joy is the Cross. Maybe you can research on such saints and pick one or a few of them as patron saints. But this joy is supernatural, a grace from God. You must persevere in asking this grace through prayer and following God’s will.
I am keeping you in my prayers.
