These words of Padre Pio - a holy Italian priest who suffered from the Stigmata (the Wounds of Christ's Passion) for over 60 years - have been on my mind quite a bit lately. I remember after my mom was in labor with one of my little sisters, she mentioned that she just kept thinking about how Padre Pio lived every minute of every day in such great pain, yet had the strength to just keep going on with his everyday tasks. "How did you do it?" she prayed. To live with constant, severe, overwhelming pain and yet... go on living... even with a smile...!
Grace, of course...... that was how he did it....... after all, he was an incredibly holy man who asked for more suffering. "But I do not feel I can be deprived of suffering--for this I lack strength," he once said. Lack strength... to be deprived of suffering???? Are you kidding me? Only God's grace could have transformed his soul into something so perfectly joined with Our Lord and His Passion that he would be yearn for more suffering!
And here I am... a pretty weak woman... begging the Lord to relieve my sufferings. They are nothing compared to Padre Pio's intense experiences of the Passion, and yet I'm asking that they be lightened anyway. For more than the last month, the constant pain has become overwhelming once again... as in past pregnancies, it feels as though my legs are not connected to anything in my hips/pelvis, and that my entire lower half of my body is not connected to the upper half. The subsequent tearing, racking pain makes it so hard to do anything... often, it is even hard to breathe because - believe it or not - that moves more of your body than just your ribcage! ;) With that, my broken tailbone, and other searing but inexplicable pain throughout my body, I feel so... discouraged... once again. It is often hard to talk or teach my children, because so much of my energy is being used to handle pain. There are nights when I do nothing but count the different sounds I hear, because they are the only things distracting me from crying out. I try to think about the great saints of suffering, like Padre Pio.... and of course my dear little St. Therese of the Child Jesus... who suffered joyfully yet so intensely for extended periods of time. And I want to know... how did you do it? How did you obtain that grace to suffer well? Yes, it is a grace... it was not of their own power... and in my own little way, with my own little sufferings, I need that grace... the grace to suffer well.
Oh, yes... mentally, I know the beauty of suffering. I know, in my head, that suffering can transform us into images of Christ - in whatever way He so chooses - and by joining our sufferings to His, we can help in His work. "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, that is, the Church," St. Paul wrote. Yes, Jesus' sacrifice was once, and for all... but He still calls us to follow in the footsteps of His Cross, to unite ourselves with Him in offering ourselves to the Father for the salvation of souls. I know that the more we joyfully accept our sufferings, the more we will image Our Lord in love... giving back to Him a very small part of the eternal, sacrificial, completely self-emptying love He has shown us. Love and suffering go hand in hand....... to love more, I must be willing to suffer more....... "If you really want to love Jesus, first learn to suffer, because suffering teaches you to love," St Gemma Galgani explained. And as Blessed (Mother) Teresa of Calcutta expressed many times, "True love hurts. If we really love one another properly, there must be sacrifice."
But I also fully and completely understand the words of young St. Therese, whose insights into the beauty of suffering love obtained for her the title of Doctor of Divine Love: "It's very easy to write beautiful things about suffering, but writing is nothing, nothing! One must suffer in order to know...!"
Those precious moments of Padre Pio's... the precious moments of suffering which he so cherished... were so much more intense than my own suffering. If he could bear it, so can I - but I need the grace to keep going... and to really see these hard times as "precious." We all need the grace to bear whatever sufferings Our Lord wishes us to experience, in union with Him, so that we can love Him more and transform our lives to better image His own. But I must beg Him... if I must bear this pain, please give me the grace to suffer well! I feel as though that grace is so far away right now... I need it to permeate my soul and make me stronger instead of discouraging me and making each moment seem more of a battle to be fought than a gift to be experienced.
And - I need to focus on the truly precious moments of pregnancy... of carrying the very fruit of the love between my husband and myself, so close under my heart... In loving this baby with all of my being... through the ups and downs, the joys and great pains of pregnancy and, ultimately, birth... I can truly give all of myself in love... a complete gift to both my husband and new child. I ask your prayers that I can keep this in mind as I enter the last week of pregnancy... and we prepare to meet our newest gift of love from the Father. :)
"In the Cross, Love is lifted up and the Cross is at the same time lifted up through Love. And from the height of the Cross, love comes down to us." ~Blessed John Paul II
"I have passed through every possible mood of suffering. Better than Wordsworth himself I know what Wordsworth meant when he said -
ReplyDelete'Suffering is permanent, obscure, and dark And has the nature of infinity.'
But while there were times when I rejoiced in the idea that my sufferings were to be endless, I could not bear them to be without meaning. Now I find hidden somewhere away in my nature something that tells me that nothing in the whole world is meaningless, and suffering least of all"-- Oscar Wilde
Thanks, Rose. :)
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