English
Documentation
Suffering, a divine subject of study
Gonzalo Herranz
St Josemaria underwent several serious illnesses in the course of his life, and so he was able to speak of pain and suffering out of his personal experience, to encourage and console the afflicted, and help them to take a positive view of sickness and death. M. A. Monge’s book “ San Josemaria y los enfermos” (‘St Josemaria and the Sick’), is a collection of testimonies by medics who knew St Josemaria, and recall his great love for the sick and for those who treated and cared for them. The following is an extract from the chapter by Gonzalo Herranz, who for many years was Head of the Department of Biomedical Humanities in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Navarre, Spain.
St Josemaria could honestly say of himself that he knew “a little bit” about the divine subject of suffering. I would like to highlight just two aspects of his “study” of this subject.
The first is the way suffering and joy were inseparable in his life. In laetitia, nulla dies sine Cruce, “In joy, no day without the Cross”, he often wrote, paraphrasing a classical dictum. He was fond of writing this in his liturgical year-book at the beginning of each year, to express an aspiration for the new year and at the same time note down a perennially repeated experience. His deep, lasting joy, which might appear to come naturally to him, was in fact achieved by dint of fighting to overcome himself, the immediate result of his constantly seeking for God.
In São Paulo, Brazil, one day, he said that the fact of being ill did not limit one’s ability to do apostolate. “But, Father, I’m sick... Right! The sick are God’s most beloved children, they’ve got more opportunities than anyone else to offer up thousands of things, to smile – it’s hard to smile when you’re sick!”
His wide experience of sickness bore fruit in countless touches of warmth and human kindness. I can remember the special affection with which he spoke to those suffering the same things he himself had endured. Once he saw one of his spiritual children whose inexpressive face masked an attack of facial paralysis induced by the cold. He said in loving, cheerful tones, “My son, don’t look so solemn…! My face went like that too, twenty-something years ago. There are three witnesses of it in Rome, but it wasn’t a trick of the weather, it was because we couldn’t afford any heating, and the damp was terrible. Don’t worry, you’ll recover. Go to the doctor, and they’ll sort it out. You’ll be even more good-looking than before!”
Diabetics were the object of special affection from him. “Courage! You’re going through something I’ve been through too. I’m a poor man. So you can bear those difficulties, that little cross, with great joy, since our Lord bore such a big Cross for our sake.”
Together with the close connection between sufferings and joy, these examples show the second feature I would like to dwell on: St Josemaria’s preaching contained nothing that was artificial. His teachings on the supernatural value of sickness were the product of his own lived experience. The direct link between the Gospel and ordinary Christian life, which has elsewhere been noted as a constant feature of his preaching, passed first through his own inner life, it was something he tried out on himself and only afterwards expressed to others, with the sincerity born of conviction. This explains his frequent references to his own experiences of sickness. His only purpose in talking about it was to help bring souls to God, being an instrument – and a clumsy one, as he often said – of God’s saving designs. Even so, he often referred to himself in the third person, out of a desire to disappear and go unnoticed. He spoke of his sufferings to encourage those who were also suffering, console them, and help them take a positive view of sickness and death.
“My children,” he said to someone who asked him what to say to a couple who were suffering over their child’s disability, “I can tell you something about a person who had a serious, incurable illness for ten years, and was happy – happier every day, because he abandoned himself in God’s hands, convinced that God was not just a theory, somewhere far off; he is more loving than the most wonderful of mothers. And I’ll say again what I said before: he is all-powerful, and doesn’t take pleasure in what harms us but what is good for us. I will remind that father, that mother, both of them, that when your child is playing with a knife or matches and you are afraid he’ll hurt himself and take it out of his hands, he cries, because he wants it and you’ve taken away his toy. We, with our earthly vision, are looking at the back of the tapestry, at the tangles and knots, and we don’t understand that true happiness comes afterwards, that everything in this world slips away like water between our hands. It doesn’t last. Tempus breve est, says the Holy Spirit: time is short. There is very little time to love.
Tell them that from me, from someone who was sick, actually at death’s door, for years – who died, but here he is still alive, still putting up a fight! Tell them that God our Lord in Heaven is their father, and that the time for loving is very short. Now is the time for them to love! And love is shown in suffering. There’s an old poem – forgive me if it sounds trite – you let me say anything, you’re too good. It’s a bad poem, but the idea is good: ‘My life is all of love / and if in love I am an expert / it is through suffering; / for there is no greater lover / than the one who has wept much.’ We men also cry. But tell them to dry their tears, because what God is doing for them is showing them preferential love. So many joys are waiting for them! So much happiness! And forever! Tell them so.”
I will end with some words by a former Chancellor of the University of Navarre, Bishop Alvaro del Portillo, who accompanied the founder of Opus Dei at every step of his life for nearly forty years. He said: “Filled with God, his soul led his body on in an amazing way; the spiritual part of him predominated over the bodily part to such an extent, that despite his advanced years it enabled him to perform the overflowing activity that so many of you witnessed (...) There is no other way to understand it. The doctors who attended him told me that (...) his great physical vitality can only be explained by his overwhelming spiritual strength. His soul, his love of God and of his neighbour for God’s sake, was what gave him that apostolic force, impelling his body upwards even when he was old, so that sometimes he would be tired out at the start of one of those get-togethers, those huge catechetical gatherings, because he hadn’t slept, but by the time he finished he was ready to begin another straight away, to carry on doing good.”
Gonzalo Herranz, from San Josemaria y los enfermos, ed. Miguel Angel Monge, Madrid, Palabra, 2004.
The first is the way suffering and joy were inseparable in his life. In laetitia, nulla dies sine Cruce, “In joy, no day without the Cross”, he often wrote, paraphrasing a classical dictum. He was fond of writing this in his liturgical year-book at the beginning of each year, to express an aspiration for the new year and at the same time note down a perennially repeated experience. His deep, lasting joy, which might appear to come naturally to him, was in fact achieved by dint of fighting to overcome himself, the immediate result of his constantly seeking for God.
In São Paulo, Brazil, one day, he said that the fact of being ill did not limit one’s ability to do apostolate. “But, Father, I’m sick... Right! The sick are God’s most beloved children, they’ve got more opportunities than anyone else to offer up thousands of things, to smile – it’s hard to smile when you’re sick!”
His wide experience of sickness bore fruit in countless touches of warmth and human kindness. I can remember the special affection with which he spoke to those suffering the same things he himself had endured. Once he saw one of his spiritual children whose inexpressive face masked an attack of facial paralysis induced by the cold. He said in loving, cheerful tones, “My son, don’t look so solemn…! My face went like that too, twenty-something years ago. There are three witnesses of it in Rome, but it wasn’t a trick of the weather, it was because we couldn’t afford any heating, and the damp was terrible. Don’t worry, you’ll recover. Go to the doctor, and they’ll sort it out. You’ll be even more good-looking than before!”
Diabetics were the object of special affection from him. “Courage! You’re going through something I’ve been through too. I’m a poor man. So you can bear those difficulties, that little cross, with great joy, since our Lord bore such a big Cross for our sake.”
Together with the close connection between sufferings and joy, these examples show the second feature I would like to dwell on: St Josemaria’s preaching contained nothing that was artificial. His teachings on the supernatural value of sickness were the product of his own lived experience. The direct link between the Gospel and ordinary Christian life, which has elsewhere been noted as a constant feature of his preaching, passed first through his own inner life, it was something he tried out on himself and only afterwards expressed to others, with the sincerity born of conviction. This explains his frequent references to his own experiences of sickness. His only purpose in talking about it was to help bring souls to God, being an instrument – and a clumsy one, as he often said – of God’s saving designs. Even so, he often referred to himself in the third person, out of a desire to disappear and go unnoticed. He spoke of his sufferings to encourage those who were also suffering, console them, and help them take a positive view of sickness and death.
“My children,” he said to someone who asked him what to say to a couple who were suffering over their child’s disability, “I can tell you something about a person who had a serious, incurable illness for ten years, and was happy – happier every day, because he abandoned himself in God’s hands, convinced that God was not just a theory, somewhere far off; he is more loving than the most wonderful of mothers. And I’ll say again what I said before: he is all-powerful, and doesn’t take pleasure in what harms us but what is good for us. I will remind that father, that mother, both of them, that when your child is playing with a knife or matches and you are afraid he’ll hurt himself and take it out of his hands, he cries, because he wants it and you’ve taken away his toy. We, with our earthly vision, are looking at the back of the tapestry, at the tangles and knots, and we don’t understand that true happiness comes afterwards, that everything in this world slips away like water between our hands. It doesn’t last. Tempus breve est, says the Holy Spirit: time is short. There is very little time to love.
Tell them that from me, from someone who was sick, actually at death’s door, for years – who died, but here he is still alive, still putting up a fight! Tell them that God our Lord in Heaven is their father, and that the time for loving is very short. Now is the time for them to love! And love is shown in suffering. There’s an old poem – forgive me if it sounds trite – you let me say anything, you’re too good. It’s a bad poem, but the idea is good: ‘My life is all of love / and if in love I am an expert / it is through suffering; / for there is no greater lover / than the one who has wept much.’ We men also cry. But tell them to dry their tears, because what God is doing for them is showing them preferential love. So many joys are waiting for them! So much happiness! And forever! Tell them so.”
I will end with some words by a former Chancellor of the University of Navarre, Bishop Alvaro del Portillo, who accompanied the founder of Opus Dei at every step of his life for nearly forty years. He said: “Filled with God, his soul led his body on in an amazing way; the spiritual part of him predominated over the bodily part to such an extent, that despite his advanced years it enabled him to perform the overflowing activity that so many of you witnessed (...) There is no other way to understand it. The doctors who attended him told me that (...) his great physical vitality can only be explained by his overwhelming spiritual strength. His soul, his love of God and of his neighbour for God’s sake, was what gave him that apostolic force, impelling his body upwards even when he was old, so that sometimes he would be tired out at the start of one of those get-togethers, those huge catechetical gatherings, because he hadn’t slept, but by the time he finished he was ready to begin another straight away, to carry on doing good.”
Gonzalo Herranz, from San Josemaria y los enfermos, ed. Miguel Angel Monge, Madrid, Palabra, 2004.
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