Ronda Chervin - Avoiding Bitterness in Suffering

Ronda Chervin

Avoiding Bitterness
in Suffering

How Our Heroes in Faith
Found Peace amid Sorrow

SOPHIA INSTITUTE PRESS
Manchester, New Hampshire

Copyright 2015 by Ronda Chervin

Avoiding Bitterness in Suffering was originally published by in 1994 Charis / Servant Books, Ann Arbor, Michigan, under the title The Kiss from the Cross: Saints for Every Kind of Suffering . This 2015 edition by Sophia Institute Press includes minor editorial revisions to the original edition.

Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.

Cover design by Coronation Media in collaboration with Perceptions Design Studio. Sacred Heart image by John Folley.

Unless otherwise noted, biblical references in this book are taken from the Catholic Edition of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1965, 1966 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

The English translation of Non-Biblical Readings from The Liturgy of the Hours 1973, 1974, 1975, International Commission on English in the Liturgy Corporation. All rights reserved. Texts contained in this work derived whole or in part from liturgical texts copyrighted by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL) have been published here with the confirmation of the Committee on Divine Worship, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. No other texts in this work have been formally reviewed or approved by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Chervin, Ronda.

[Kiss from the cross]

Avoiding bitterness in suffering : how our heroes in faith found peace amid sorrow / Ronda Chervin.

pages cm

Originally published under title: The kiss from the cross : saints for every kind of suffering. Ann Arbor, Mich. : Charis/Servant Pub., c1994.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-1-62282-303-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 978-1-622823-048 1. Christian saints Biography. 2. Suffering Religious aspects Christianity. I. Title.

BR1710.C45 2015

282.092'2 dc23

[B]

2015018368

Contents

Introduction

Meeting Christ in Suffering in the Spirit of the Saints

In 1991, my son Charles took his life, jumping off a bridge in Big Sur, California. In his letter to the family he told us that he thought it was pointless to endure the sufferings he was sure were inevitable in a world such as ours.

For my husband and me, no suffering we had ever experienced, not even asthma or cancer, could rival the unbearable pain of our sons death. For a year we wept and writhed, trying to dislodge in some way the terrible sword that had pierced our hearts.

The prayers that we uttered in our grief seemed to come from a different, much more desperate place. They did not reach out toward the light but seemingly catapulted into sheer darkness or backward toward the memory of God rather than the living God.

Words from Scripture and from the writings of the saints that previously had seemed a little extreme but understandable suddenly seemed unbelievable. How could St. Paul really have penned the famous lines from Colossians 1:24: Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christs afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church? Certainly I am willing to suffer for the Church. Even I, cowardly though I may be, am sometimes willing to suffer for the Church when I have no other choice, as in braving ridicule when defending Christian truth. But when St. Paul writes that he rejoices in his sufferings, could he mean the type of sufferings my husband and I went through over the death of our son?

Or take such typical thoughts about suffering as these from St. Rose of Lima:

If only mortals would learn how great it is to possess divine grace, how beautiful, how noble, how precious. How many riches it hides within itself, how many joys and delights! Without doubt they would devote all their care and concern to winning for themselves pains and afflictions. All men throughout the world would seek trouble, infirmities and torments, instead of good fortune, in order to attain the unfathomable treasure of grace.

Coming upon it in my time of excruciating suffering over my son, I would wonder: suppose such beautiful lines are really just a sort of whistling in the dark. Suppose a saint is really just someone whose pain is so great that he has to invent some infinite meaning for it when really there is nothing but darkness and absurdity.

And when such broodingly melancholic speculations became overwhelming, I would escape into some secular novel to enter into another world. I sought a scene where I was not one of the characters, so I could rest from my misery. Sometimes I would find the Hound of Heaven waiting unexpectedly in the middle of the book.

Reading Sula by Toni Morrison, I came upon a description of Pentecostal women at a funeral service, praising God loudly because the only way to avoid the Hand of God is to get in it.

Or, far into Paul Scotts Raj Quartet about life in India during World War II, I came upon this stunner: We must not forget the worst because the worst is our life and the rest is only history (our sanitized account). Between our life and history lies a dark valley where the rapt and patient shepherds of the flock drive us toward the God of forgiveness.

And so I came to think that perhaps there was no escape from pain at all but that, instead, pain itself was the road into the heart of Christ, where the holiness that had always eluded me might be found. And who better to journey with but the saints whose pilgrim drink was that grail of intense suffering they eagerly sought at the hands of their beloved?

I decided to research the lives and thoughts of many types of saints who experienced suffering: saints for the addicted, saints for the depressed, saints for the fatigued, saints for the raped, saints for the unhappily married, saints for those in physical pain, saints for the frustrated, and several other kinds of suffering.

Among saints with certain afflictions I found a pattern that I, in my life, could ponder and imitate. For instance, reading of St. Elizabeth Setons anguished fear for a teen sons salvation and well-being helped me understand that even saints cannot simply transcend the pain of fear for children by trusting in providence. The pain is to be offered to Christ, not eliminated. Reading about holy stigmatists, such as St. Francis of Assisi, enabled me to overcome fear of a mastectomy due to breast cancer by realizing the scar after my surgery would be like the wounded side of Christ, my Lord. I sincerely pray that you, too, will encounter saints whose example you can ponder and imitate.

Each chapter of Avoiding Bitterness in Suffering relates the struggle of one saint, a sort of archetype, then goes on to add shorter reflections from the lives of other saints with the same cross. It concludes with suggested steps in meeting Christ in that particular suffering.

Will this be a depressing book to read? I think not. For me it brought courage and hope that in Christ and in communion with his saints, I could ultimately triumph over every kind of adversity. In reading about the sufferings of the saints, we also see the profound joy they knew, a foretaste of eternal happiness. My last chapter will show how we, too, can know more joy in the midst of grace-filled sufferings.

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