Thomas Merton and St. John of the Cross: Lives on Fire
Nass Cannon
The streets were empty that cold day as we shivered in our spring clothes. In January, no one is in Ubeda, not even American tourists! We were there almost by happenstance as a convenient place to spend the night on the long drive back to Madrid from Grenada. My wife and I had gathered up our children to fill our empty nest and take them on a trip to southern Spain, foolishly thinking it would be warmer than other European destinations. (My unsolicited advice would be that if you plan to take a trip to southern Spain in January, take your ski clothes!). Our trip included a rail excursion to Toledo and a self-drive trip through Andalusia including Seville and Grenada.
As we set out to explore the town, my middle son, an insatiable explorer, stumbled across a museum with the name of Juan de la Croix and asked whether I had heard of him? The museum was the monastery where St. John died. After touring the restored cell in which he lived, we viewed his relics and the table on which they treated his gangrenous leg. Unaware, I had traced his movements in Southern Spain (where he tirelessly journeyed to establish and serve in monasteries) and awakened to the reality of our own “pilgrimage” one day before departing Spain. It is this reawakened interest in the writings of St. John of the Cross coupled with the long term assistance provided by that spiritual guide, Thomas Merton, which brings me here today.
In this presentation, I wish to share some observations about Thomas Merton and St. John of the Cross as persons on fire with the love of God. I will to do this using St. John of the Cross’s concept of contemplation as an encounter with the fiery presence of God. I intend also to reflect on the end effects of such a contemplation expressed by Merton as “the unity of a person” or “final integration” and St. John as “The Living Flame of Love”.
Thomas Merton followed in the spiritual path of St. John of the Cross as both encountered the God Moses described in Deuteronomy as a consuming fire (Dt 4:24) . The analogy of God as fire permeates most of St. John’s writings especially in The Dark Night of the Soul, and The Living Flame of Love. St. John views the contemplative process as the transformation of the soul by this consuming fire. The source of this fire, the Spirit, afflicts, transforms, and causes the soul to blaze in loving union with the Father and the Son. Merton also experienced this fire, as illustrated by his description of himself as a burnt man, in his reference to “the living experience of divine love and Holy Spirit in the flame of which St. John of the Cross speaks” and believing that this spark resides in our heart. Like St. John, Merton viewed contemplation as the action of the Spirit within the heart of every person. God’s embrace of contemplatives such as Thomas Merton and St. John of the Cross cause them to be burnt, purged, and erupt into flames. Although both roared into flames, their writings reflect an individual, personal, and unique expression of their union with God.
Merton in his writings quotes extensively from the texts of St. John and acknowledges his debt to him as a spiritual forbear and guide. Early in his monastic life, Merton comments on his relationship to St. John “… I say that St. John of the Cross seems to me to be the most accessible of the saints that is only another way of saying that he is my favorite saint”.(1) Merton saw St. John as accessible because he revealed his inner depths and the intimacy of his relationship with God for all to see.
“Nevertheless it is true, if you consider that few saints, if any, have ever opened up to other men such remote depths in their own soul. St. John of the Cross admits you, in the Living Flame, to his soul’s ‘deepest center’, to the ‘deep caverns’ in which the lamps of fire, the attributes of God, flash mysteriously in metaphysical shadows; who else has done as much?” (2)
I think many of us would answer: Thomas Merton, who undressed himself, his thinking, his reflections and contemplative journey, in full public view.
These men, who were possessed by God and dispossessed in so many other ways, had many similarities during their earthly pilgrimage but also some striking differences. Both had splintered families at an early age. Juan de Yepes y Alvarez was born in Fontiveros, Spain, in 1542, the son of an affluent father who was disowned for marrying beneath his station. He died shortly after John’s birth, forcing John’s mother to support the family by silk weaving. Like John, Merton lost a parent at a young age. He was six when his mother died of stomach cancer.
St. John had a reputation of piety from youth and at age 17 attended a Jesuit College while working at the Plague Hospital de la Concepcion. After being ordained in 1567 in the Carmelite order, he later joined St. Teresa as her confessor and spiritual director at the Convent of the Incarnation. St. Theresa introduced John to members of her convent as a saint. By contrast, we all know the more Augustinian youthful life of Thomas Merton, particularly at Cambridge, which may have been influenced by the bohemian lifestyle of his artistic father. At age 7, he was traveling in the company of his father, his father’s love interest and her husband to Bermuda; I have read that Merton referred to this as the “Bermuda Triangle”.
Both St. John’s and Merton’s spiritual lives thrived in the desert. In 1576, the Calced Friars arrested John and confined him to a small cell in their monastery in Toledo because of his reform efforts. During this time of physical confinement and abuse, he composed the Spiritual Canticle, reflecting a spirit on fire. In the confinement of a trappist monastery, Merton became a two-fisted monk. He took to being a monk the way he formerly took to the bars. He went at it. He left nothing behind, taking with him all of his gifts-- writing, scholarship, and a mind that would follow the truth wherever it took him. Within the monastery, Merton became an explorer of himself, society, other cultures, and the no-face of God.
Both experienced rejection. Although St. John held many offices in the Discalced Province and tirelessly journeyed on foot in their service, he was rejected by his own order which threatened to send him to Mexico near the end of his life. Shortly afterwards, when St. John’s leg became infected, he chose to go to the monastery at Ubeda where his humility moved a hostile prior to became a champion of St. John’s cause for beatification. Likewise we all know of Merton’s rejection as he spoke out for social justice, the peace movement, and immersed himself in Eastern thought; however to my knowledge there is not a movement promoting Merton’s cause for beatification.
While their lives were similar in some respects and very different in others, it is in the writings of their experience of the Spirit that their kinship is most striking. Both were great spiritual writers and guides and passionate men who sought God with great desire. Thomas Merton experienced the purgation reflected in St. John of the Cross’s metaphor of the soul being like a log of wood heated by an external flame before slowly igniting and roaring into flames. St. John described this process in the Dark Night of the Soul:
"For the greater clearness of what has been said, and of what has still to be said, it is well to observe at this point that this purgative and loving knowledge or Divine light whereof we here speak acts upon the soul which it is purging and preparing for perfect union with it in the same way as fire acts upon a log of wood in order to transform it into itself; for material fire, acting upon wood, first of all begins to dry it, by driving out its moisture and causing it to shed the water which it contains within itself. Then it begins to make it black, dark and unsightly, and even to give forth a bad odour, and, as it dries it little by little, it brings out and drives away all the dark and unsightly accidents which are contrary to the nature of fire. And, finally, it begins to kindle it externally and give it heat, and at last transforms it into itself and makes it as beautiful as fire."(3)
Merton alludes to this purgation at the end of The Seven Storey Mountain when he uses the literary device of quoting the Spirit who is speaking to him:
"Everything that touches you shall burn you, and you will draw your hand away in pain, until you have withdrawn yourself from all things. Then you will be all alone. Everything that can be desired will sear you, and brand you with a cautery, and you will fly from it in pain to be alone. Every created joy will come to you as pain, and you will die to all joy and be left alone. You will be praised, and it will be like burning at the stake." (4)
Merton concludes the revelation on why he was brought to Gethsemani: “That you may become the brother of God and learn to know the Christ of the burnt men.” (5)
Becoming the brother of God led him into some strange places and activities as he became the brother of every person. After his epiphany on the streets of Louisville in 1958, he reached out to his brothers everywhere including celebrities, social activists, Buddhist and Zen monks. He also experienced the Christ of the burnt men, in himself, his neighbors, those who immolated themselves during the Vietnam peace protest, and in his Zen like death by electrocution. But most of all he knew the Christ of the burnt men purged by the fire of contemplation. Purged by that fire, Merton’s soul roared into flames. In one of his last written and mature testimonies, Contemplative Prayer, he wrote:
"The living experience of divine love and Holy Spirit in the flame of which St. John of the Cross is speaking is a true awareness that one has died and risen in Christ. It is an experience of mystical renewal, an inner transformation brought about entirely by the power of God’s merciful love, implying the ‘death’ of the self-centered and self-sufficient ego and the appearance of a new and liberated self who lives and acts ‘in the Spirit’.” (6)
St. John described what that liberated self who lives and acts in the Spirit experiences.
"This flame of love is the Spirit of its Bridegroom, who is the Holy Spirit. The soul feels him within itself not only as a fire that has consumed and transformed it but as a fire that burns and flares within it, as I mentioned. And that flame, every time it flares up, bathes the soul in glory and refreshes it with the quality of divine life." (7) Experiencing this flame, Merton wrote, “Love sails me around the house. I have only time for eternity which is to say for love, love, love…it is love and it gives me soft punches all the time in the center of my heart.”(8)
Merton attained a liberated self who lives and acts in the Spirit or “a living flame of love” in St. John’s verbiage. Although both were burnt by the same Spirit, their fruition differed towards their spiritual journey’s end. While Merton chose to emphasize the Spirit’s effect on leading a person to integration and wholeness, St. John focused on the intensity of the Spirit’s flame. From Merton’s perspective, the contemplative as a living flame of love recovers the true self, obtains final integration, and has a realization of oneness with God and all that is. Merton states such a person embraces all of humanity, transcending the accidents of culture and recognizes the one truth shining out in all of its manifestations:
"The one who has attained final integration is no longer limited by the culture in which he has grown up. "He has embraced all of life." He passes beyond all these limiting forms, while retaining all that is best and most universal in them, finally givingbirth to a fully comprehensive self. He accepts not only his own community, his own society, his own friends, his own culture,but all humanity. He does not remain bound to one limited set of values in such a way that he opposes them aggressively or defensively to others. He is fully "Catholic" in the best sense of the word. He has a unified vision and experience of the one truth shining out in all its various manifestations, some clearer than others, some more definite and more certain than others. He does not set these partial views up in opposition to each other, but unifies them in a dialectic or an insight of complementarities. With this view of life he is able to bring perspective, liberty and spontaneity into the lives of others. The finally integrated person is a peacemaker, and that is why there is such a desperate need for our leaders to become such persons of insight." (9)
However, Merton is no stranger to the divine love operating within the soul. He writes that the fruit of contemplation results in a new man in union with the Spirit of Christ and therefore one with the Father and Spirit. He states that our oneness with Christ consists of being united to His Spirit. "We cannot get too deep into the mystery of our oneness in Christ. It is so deep as to be unthinkable and yet a little thought about it doesn't hurt. But it doesn't help too much either. The thing is, that we are not united in a thought of Christ or a desire of Christ, but in His Spirit." (10)
He perceives contemplation, like St. John of the Cross, as the very act of this living flame, the Spirit, bringing us to union with the Father through purifying our hearts. The fruit of this purgation is love.
"That is to say he loves with purity and freedom that spring spontaneously from the fact that he has fully recovered the divine likeness and is now his fully true self because he is lost in God and hence knows of no ego in himself. All he knows is love."(11)
Near the end of his life, the yearning of that Spirit flared from the depths of his heart as he spontaneously uttered the closing prayer at a conference in Calcutta.
"We are creatures of love. Let us join hands, as we did before, and I will try to say something that comes out of the depths of our hearts. I ask you to concentrate on the love that is in you, that is in us all. I have no idea what I am going to say. I am going to be silent a minute, and then I will say something… O God, we are one with you. You have made us one with you. You dwell in us. Help us to preserve this openness and to fight for it with all of our hearts. Help us to realize that there can be no understanding where there is mutual rejection. Oh, God, in accepting one another wholeheartedly, fully, completely, we accept You, and we thank You , and we adore You, and we love You with our whole being because our being is in Your being, our spirit is rooted in your Spirit. Fill us then with love, and let us be bound together with love as we go our diverse ways, united in this one spirit which makes You present in the world, and which makes You witness to the ultimate reality that is love. Love has overcome. Love is victorious. Amen."(12)
Although both men’s writings testify to similar qualities in their experience of union with God’s Spirit, it does not appear to me that Merton communicates (or chooses to communicate) the intensity of the Spirit’s wounding love that St. John calls a cautery. St. John notes that a soul in union with God can experience an even hotter flame.
"This cautery, as we mentioned, is the Holy Spirit. For as Moses declares in Deuteronomy, Our Lord God is a consuming fire [Dt. 4:24], that is, a fire of love that, being of infinite power, can inestimably consume and transform into itself the soul it touches. Yet he burns each soul according to its preparation. He will burn one more, another less, and this he does insofar as he desires, and how and when he desires. When he wills to touch somewhat vehemently, the soul's burning reaches such a high degree of love that it seems to surpass that of all the fires of the world, for he is an infinite fire of love. As a result, in this union, the soul calls the Holy Spirit a cautery. Since in a cautery the fire is more intense and fierce and produces a more singular effect than it does in other combustibles, the soul calls the act of this union a cautery in comparison with other acts of union, for it is the outcome of a fire so much more aflame than all other fires. Because the soul in this case is entirely transformed by the divine flame, it not only feels a cautery, but has become a cautery of blazing fire." (13)
It is true that Thomas Merton is no St. John of the Cross. But then again, St. John of the Cross is no Merton. Each man was shaped by his embrace of God to become uniquely himself. Merton’s personality flared toward openness, tolerance, inclusiveness, and wholeness. His intellect questioned and integrated. He stretched boundaries and saw “the one truth shining forth in all of its manifestations”. He saw beyond irreconcilable differences and viewed the disparate as complimentary. Buddhism, Zen, Sufism, existential literature, art, photography and all objects of his contemplative gaze as well as his lived experiences complimented his journey as a Christian contemplative. To my thinking, one of his major accomplishments was to achieve final integration in himself as a prophetic sign pointing the way to a potential deeper union of humankind which may be attainable despite all of our disparate cultures and belief systems.
St. John’s temperament and mission differed. A reformer, confessor, and spiritual guide during his lifetime, St. John’s mission, in the legacy of his writings, in my view, was to poetically communicate the soul’s embrace by God. He was uniquely gifted to view, experience, and communicate the Spirit’s effect on his own soul to the furthest extent possible and still remain on earth. A spiritual guide to St. Theresa and Merton, he beckons to those who leave all paths as they are consumed by the fire of the Living God.
Separated by time, culture, and mission, both contemplatives, in the Spirit, share with us their journey to God. For a fractured world bent on destruction, Merton radiates hope with his message of “the unity of a person” and “final integration” whereas St. John explains the timeless process of transforming union where God and man become one as “The Living Flame of Love”.
In conclusion, I propose that Thomas Merton like St. John of the Cross became a living flame of love. Purged by the Spirit of God, both penetrated into the center of their being to become a roaring conflagration as only occurs in those brought to union with the Living God. Burnt by this fire, both wrote of its effect. Merton’s concept of the person, “a unity which is love” and his concept of the person’s “final integration” arose from this encounter as did St. John of the Cross’s perception of the perfected person as a “living flame of love.”
Finally, for both men, contemplation is the means to this encounter. Merton states, “Contemplation is the mystery in which God reveals Himself as the very center of our own inmost self.” St. John indicates that contemplation perfects the soul so that it may experience the indwelling of the Holy Trinity. An effect of this indwelling for Merton is the final integration of the person: “He has a unified vision and experience of the one truth shining out in all its various manifestations.” Similarly, St. John relates that a perfected soul--- “knows creatures through God and not God through creatures.” St. John would agree with Merton that “… the one love that is the source of all, the form of all, and the end of all is one in him and in all.” Both encountered that love and became living flames spewing embers catching others on fire.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
The Broken Healer
I am a physician who views his root identity as one called to heal. Yet, I experience myself as broken, as one admonished by the phrase, “Physician, heal thyself.” Perhaps you, too, in your healing ministry, experience yourself as a broken healer. Let us together explore some notions regarding the healer as broken, examine the nature of healing, and consider the relationship of the healer to one healed.
The Healer as Broken
More than most, healers—all of us—share in the mortality and brokenness of all. We experience our brokenness as physical, mental, and spiritual. We are not immune to the wear and tear of too many sleepless nights, lack of exercise, ulcers, heart diseases, cancer, strokes—the lot of man and his human condition. In our care for our patients, we ponder their decline and see ourselves, as though we were looking into a mirror and watching our own deterioration. We breathe sickness, suffering, death, and dying—we inhale the phenomena like a chain-smoker, all the while with a finger on our pulse and a self-reflective mind awaiting our own inevitable collapse. We move through the world of sickness and suffering, not as an observer, remote and detached, but as a participant, one victim among other victims; the days, the nights, become a blur of tormented faces, racked bodies, confused minds—and endless stream of suffering humanity passing by—not so much before us as with us, as together we march toward death.
As we minister unto others, we must not be surprised at our own capacity for betrayal and even evil. As broken healers, we will find in ourselves the darkness that is part of our interior. Rage, sadism, violence, disgust, hatred, rejection, malice, envy, greed, pride, jealousy, lust, rebellion are part of us. In our encounters, these dark forces often surface, tempting us to injure those we seek to heal. Also, long exposure to suffering creates a numbing effect—an anesthetization of our sensibilities best classified and expressed as indifference.
The recognition of these forces in us is an opportunity for humble growth. By acknowledging our weaknesses and seeking forgiveness when appropriate, we find healing as we seek to heal. Fruits of the penetration of our brokenness are compassion and a release of the spirit of healing.
Two other virtues—not often discussed, but direct fruits of our brokenness as healers—are an experience of sorrow, and growth in tenderheartedness.
As healers, we experience sorrow in our relationships with others—sorrow in our errors of judgment, sorrow in our limited capabilities, sorrow in our neglect and indifference. We inhabit a world of sorrow, a world deeper than regrets or sadness, a world in touch with the aches and pains of the human heart. This pain-filled world is more than just a reaction—“I am sorry”: it is deeper than that. Sorrow is a property of love, when there is nothing it can do to change the suffering of the other person, other than suffer with him. Sorrow presupposes care, concern, and love. A measure of our love is a measure of our sorrow.
Tenderheartedness is more than sympathy. A virtue, opposed to indifference, it is an interior stance—an attitude more easily recognized by another person than by oneself. It involves having tender feelings, but tenderheartedness is more than just feelings. There are times when storms of anger, revulsion, frustration, and even rage arise in our encounters. Tenderheartedness relates to the will to treat others, as you would have them treat you—no matter what the circumstances. It is to have a human heart, a will to encounter a human person, not a disease or a process. It is the constant struggle not to let our beliefs, prejudices, and feelings create barriers in our encounters. Tenderheartedness must not be misconstrued as the evasion of a hard decision or even softness in the face of a necessary confrontation; the denial of emotion; or retreat before the truth of physical, mental, or spiritual realities. Rather, it is an interior stance of openness, of receptivity: an I-wish-you-well attitude. It regards you as a friend and its communications are I-wish-to-help-you. A measure of the depth of our personal experience of our brokenness, a tender heart radiates kindness, patience, and compassion.
Brokenness is a precondition for healing. This power to heal, an incomprehensible mystery, the Way of Divine Love, can be experienced, even though not understood. When God says, “What do you want?” we say, “To be healed, to be reconciled.” We expose our brokenness. Touched by his healing power, we experience the healing of our own bodies, minds, and souls. But, we also discover, he says, “Go and do likewise.” In the mutual dependence of the healing encounter, we learn that He heals us as we consent to heal others. We are reconciled as we reconcile. We discover that our brokenness is a precondition for healing. Our search for health of mind, body, and soul through the medium of God’s power to heal becomes the source of healing for others—our brokenness co joined to his. Exploding then from the very depths of our brokenness comes the power to heal. As we assent to heal one another, to care for one anther, God assents to heal us, to care for us, so that, in the process of healing, we find healing—because that is the medium through which he chooses to encounter us.
The Nature of Healing
The essence of healing is not the alleviation of suffering (although that is an important element), but reconciliation. Genuine healing is not simply a repair process, a replacement of spare organs, or the eradication of an infectious illness. Genuine healing transcends the repairing process to include deep integration of body, mind, and spirit.
Healing involves a reconciliation of the body as made subject to mind, and mind made subject to spirit, and spirit made subject to the Spirit of God. This reconciliation is an integration, a harmony, a tendency toward wholeness, a subjection of priorities—body to mind, mind to spirit. Our bodies could be put in the service of our minds, harnessed to a spirit of power, of domination; a Herculean body could be put in the service of an ascetic, disciplined mind, put in the service of the spirit of this world, characterized by exploitation, domineering, a will to power in relationships. Alternatively, a disciplined body could be harnessed to an orderly mind, put in the service of the suffering servant, characterized by love, gentleness, service, justice, and peace in relationships.
There are priorities in healing. God’s priorities may not be ours. Perhaps, his highest priority is the healing of the soul, then the mind, then the body. The phenomenon of human suffering is a mystery and will remain so. But sometimes it seems that the body is allowed to suffer and the mind assaulted for the sake of building up the spirit-generating virtues. Our allocation of resources reverses these priorities. Most of our attention is directed toward the body, little to the mind, and virtually none to the spirit.
Isaiah’s account of the Suffering Servant is at the heart, in mystery, of all healing. Here is deep mystery: healing from a Suffering Servant, whose stripes, whose brokenness, are the very source of healing. We, as healers, are invited to share in the brokenness of the Suffering Servant; we are invited to explore our own brokenness, to co-join it to his and share, too, in his power to heal. Medicine is a composite of knowledge, individuals with knowledge, medications, technology, procedures, patients—a composite of healers, patients, and assorted media through which they relate. To result in a healing encounter, all this must be permeated by the spirit of the Suffering Servant.
The Healer’s Relationship to Others
We, as healers, in our relationships with the suffering other, experience our human insecurity. We experience our limitations, the fragility of our lives, our essential oneness with the suffering other person. This experience may be characterized by the statement, “There but for the grace of God go I .” We may penetrate the suffering of the other in empathetic degrees. First, through knowledge of the suffering other, we acquire a conscious awareness of the content of their suffering. Through our ongoing relationship, we immerse ourselves in the other’s suffering through empathetic understanding. As our intimacy progresses, we can progress to “feeling” the other’s pain. This pain and suffering is like that which occurs in a loving family when a child is sick or brother ill. There is a final degree of involvement, very rare and unique, that belongs to the mystical realm. Imitators of the Suffering Servant—St. Francis of Assisi, The Little Flower, Saint Theresa, Padre Pio—voluntarily assent to suffer for others. Somehow the vitality of their voluntary sufferings showers spiritual, mental, and even physical healing on others, even though those individuals may be unknown to them personally. This is the concept of a mystical union whereby all of us are somehow tied to one another and affect one another, both living and dead, through the mystery of our forming one body. So our healing relationships with others are concrete (physical), mental, emotional, and spiritual. We concretely touch and provide services that are physical; we intellectually and mentally engage the content of their suffering and devise plans of therapy and solutions to their problems. We engage them emotionally as well. We relate spiritually to them through our prayers, our dialogue, our worship.
Community
Another important aspect of our healing relationships is the necessity of community. The phenomenon of healing is not an individual event, not only in the obvious sense of support personnel, nurses, secretaries, chaplains, doctors, janitors, therapist—all of those individuals who make a healing encounter possible—but also in the sense that the power to heal resides in the community. It is not the property of doctors or nurses or account managers. For that matter, it is no one’s property. It is a gift that dwells collectively in the community and can manifest itself most forcefully when the whole community mobilizes itself to care for the suffering other. So it is a communal event in the direct, supportive, healing relationships of family and friends, and in the invisible relationships of prayer and church services. We broken healers must then pay attention to one another, learn to listen to one another, have respect for one another’s unique healing gifts, affirm them, develop them, and allow them expression in our communal ministry.
In our communal healing ministry, we should come to listen reverently to the testimony, the witness of the suffering other. We must receive the communications of our patients as more than factual exchanges. We must listen deeply for the faint sounds of the divine spark writing us a letter of love in the concrete humanness of our sufferers as we hear the disclosure of their story, of who and why they are, of the pains and hurts of being them. As we grow in our regard for suffering others, we may come to feel for them as though they were our sons or daughters, our brothers or sisters. This tender regard can progress to experiencing them as our very other selves. In this experience, we see that others’ suffering is their own and not ours, and that their relationships, personal history, traditions, and so on, are distinctly theirs and not ours. Yet, somehow we complement and complete each other; somehow we are one.
And so the whole communal aspect of the healing process should be approached just so—as a big family. This brother with cancer, this one with heart problems, this sister with leukemia, this little brother with AIDS.
Two young men with AIDS died last week. During their long difficult struggle dying, they came to know the heart of rejection. They lived at the center of isolation. They were perceived as biological founts of contagion, viewed with suspicion, distrust, contempt, and hatred. Never have I encountered such despair as gripped these young men. The last one to die was fecally incontinent. His mother cared for him. Her family and other children shunned them. They had no money, no food, no gas. Their washing machine broke.
And where was I?
The second one, a Catholic, was discharged from the hospital, and died at home shortly afterwards without even the spiritual consolation of his Church!
And where was I?
An 85 year-old man who provided care for his Alzheimer’s-stricken wife, as well as caring for an invalid in-law, fell and broke his ribs; he was told that he could not drive again. Faced with the impossible situation of caring for two invalids and not able even to care for himself, he despairingly took a rife and shot his wife, his in-law, and himself.
And where was l?
Let us today answer that question. Let us commit ourselves to a new beginning—let us form ourselves into a community of prayer, love, compassion and tender concern for one another.
Let us become a humane people concerned about the least among us. Let us become a humane society seeking the common good. Let us become a humane world espousing the survival, nurturing, unity, and needs of all humanity.
Copyright 1986
The Healer as Broken
More than most, healers—all of us—share in the mortality and brokenness of all. We experience our brokenness as physical, mental, and spiritual. We are not immune to the wear and tear of too many sleepless nights, lack of exercise, ulcers, heart diseases, cancer, strokes—the lot of man and his human condition. In our care for our patients, we ponder their decline and see ourselves, as though we were looking into a mirror and watching our own deterioration. We breathe sickness, suffering, death, and dying—we inhale the phenomena like a chain-smoker, all the while with a finger on our pulse and a self-reflective mind awaiting our own inevitable collapse. We move through the world of sickness and suffering, not as an observer, remote and detached, but as a participant, one victim among other victims; the days, the nights, become a blur of tormented faces, racked bodies, confused minds—and endless stream of suffering humanity passing by—not so much before us as with us, as together we march toward death.
As we minister unto others, we must not be surprised at our own capacity for betrayal and even evil. As broken healers, we will find in ourselves the darkness that is part of our interior. Rage, sadism, violence, disgust, hatred, rejection, malice, envy, greed, pride, jealousy, lust, rebellion are part of us. In our encounters, these dark forces often surface, tempting us to injure those we seek to heal. Also, long exposure to suffering creates a numbing effect—an anesthetization of our sensibilities best classified and expressed as indifference.
The recognition of these forces in us is an opportunity for humble growth. By acknowledging our weaknesses and seeking forgiveness when appropriate, we find healing as we seek to heal. Fruits of the penetration of our brokenness are compassion and a release of the spirit of healing.
Two other virtues—not often discussed, but direct fruits of our brokenness as healers—are an experience of sorrow, and growth in tenderheartedness.
As healers, we experience sorrow in our relationships with others—sorrow in our errors of judgment, sorrow in our limited capabilities, sorrow in our neglect and indifference. We inhabit a world of sorrow, a world deeper than regrets or sadness, a world in touch with the aches and pains of the human heart. This pain-filled world is more than just a reaction—“I am sorry”: it is deeper than that. Sorrow is a property of love, when there is nothing it can do to change the suffering of the other person, other than suffer with him. Sorrow presupposes care, concern, and love. A measure of our love is a measure of our sorrow.
Tenderheartedness is more than sympathy. A virtue, opposed to indifference, it is an interior stance—an attitude more easily recognized by another person than by oneself. It involves having tender feelings, but tenderheartedness is more than just feelings. There are times when storms of anger, revulsion, frustration, and even rage arise in our encounters. Tenderheartedness relates to the will to treat others, as you would have them treat you—no matter what the circumstances. It is to have a human heart, a will to encounter a human person, not a disease or a process. It is the constant struggle not to let our beliefs, prejudices, and feelings create barriers in our encounters. Tenderheartedness must not be misconstrued as the evasion of a hard decision or even softness in the face of a necessary confrontation; the denial of emotion; or retreat before the truth of physical, mental, or spiritual realities. Rather, it is an interior stance of openness, of receptivity: an I-wish-you-well attitude. It regards you as a friend and its communications are I-wish-to-help-you. A measure of the depth of our personal experience of our brokenness, a tender heart radiates kindness, patience, and compassion.
Brokenness is a precondition for healing. This power to heal, an incomprehensible mystery, the Way of Divine Love, can be experienced, even though not understood. When God says, “What do you want?” we say, “To be healed, to be reconciled.” We expose our brokenness. Touched by his healing power, we experience the healing of our own bodies, minds, and souls. But, we also discover, he says, “Go and do likewise.” In the mutual dependence of the healing encounter, we learn that He heals us as we consent to heal others. We are reconciled as we reconcile. We discover that our brokenness is a precondition for healing. Our search for health of mind, body, and soul through the medium of God’s power to heal becomes the source of healing for others—our brokenness co joined to his. Exploding then from the very depths of our brokenness comes the power to heal. As we assent to heal one another, to care for one anther, God assents to heal us, to care for us, so that, in the process of healing, we find healing—because that is the medium through which he chooses to encounter us.
The Nature of Healing
The essence of healing is not the alleviation of suffering (although that is an important element), but reconciliation. Genuine healing is not simply a repair process, a replacement of spare organs, or the eradication of an infectious illness. Genuine healing transcends the repairing process to include deep integration of body, mind, and spirit.
Healing involves a reconciliation of the body as made subject to mind, and mind made subject to spirit, and spirit made subject to the Spirit of God. This reconciliation is an integration, a harmony, a tendency toward wholeness, a subjection of priorities—body to mind, mind to spirit. Our bodies could be put in the service of our minds, harnessed to a spirit of power, of domination; a Herculean body could be put in the service of an ascetic, disciplined mind, put in the service of the spirit of this world, characterized by exploitation, domineering, a will to power in relationships. Alternatively, a disciplined body could be harnessed to an orderly mind, put in the service of the suffering servant, characterized by love, gentleness, service, justice, and peace in relationships.
There are priorities in healing. God’s priorities may not be ours. Perhaps, his highest priority is the healing of the soul, then the mind, then the body. The phenomenon of human suffering is a mystery and will remain so. But sometimes it seems that the body is allowed to suffer and the mind assaulted for the sake of building up the spirit-generating virtues. Our allocation of resources reverses these priorities. Most of our attention is directed toward the body, little to the mind, and virtually none to the spirit.
Isaiah’s account of the Suffering Servant is at the heart, in mystery, of all healing. Here is deep mystery: healing from a Suffering Servant, whose stripes, whose brokenness, are the very source of healing. We, as healers, are invited to share in the brokenness of the Suffering Servant; we are invited to explore our own brokenness, to co-join it to his and share, too, in his power to heal. Medicine is a composite of knowledge, individuals with knowledge, medications, technology, procedures, patients—a composite of healers, patients, and assorted media through which they relate. To result in a healing encounter, all this must be permeated by the spirit of the Suffering Servant.
The Healer’s Relationship to Others
We, as healers, in our relationships with the suffering other, experience our human insecurity. We experience our limitations, the fragility of our lives, our essential oneness with the suffering other person. This experience may be characterized by the statement, “There but for the grace of God go I .” We may penetrate the suffering of the other in empathetic degrees. First, through knowledge of the suffering other, we acquire a conscious awareness of the content of their suffering. Through our ongoing relationship, we immerse ourselves in the other’s suffering through empathetic understanding. As our intimacy progresses, we can progress to “feeling” the other’s pain. This pain and suffering is like that which occurs in a loving family when a child is sick or brother ill. There is a final degree of involvement, very rare and unique, that belongs to the mystical realm. Imitators of the Suffering Servant—St. Francis of Assisi, The Little Flower, Saint Theresa, Padre Pio—voluntarily assent to suffer for others. Somehow the vitality of their voluntary sufferings showers spiritual, mental, and even physical healing on others, even though those individuals may be unknown to them personally. This is the concept of a mystical union whereby all of us are somehow tied to one another and affect one another, both living and dead, through the mystery of our forming one body. So our healing relationships with others are concrete (physical), mental, emotional, and spiritual. We concretely touch and provide services that are physical; we intellectually and mentally engage the content of their suffering and devise plans of therapy and solutions to their problems. We engage them emotionally as well. We relate spiritually to them through our prayers, our dialogue, our worship.
Community
Another important aspect of our healing relationships is the necessity of community. The phenomenon of healing is not an individual event, not only in the obvious sense of support personnel, nurses, secretaries, chaplains, doctors, janitors, therapist—all of those individuals who make a healing encounter possible—but also in the sense that the power to heal resides in the community. It is not the property of doctors or nurses or account managers. For that matter, it is no one’s property. It is a gift that dwells collectively in the community and can manifest itself most forcefully when the whole community mobilizes itself to care for the suffering other. So it is a communal event in the direct, supportive, healing relationships of family and friends, and in the invisible relationships of prayer and church services. We broken healers must then pay attention to one another, learn to listen to one another, have respect for one another’s unique healing gifts, affirm them, develop them, and allow them expression in our communal ministry.
In our communal healing ministry, we should come to listen reverently to the testimony, the witness of the suffering other. We must receive the communications of our patients as more than factual exchanges. We must listen deeply for the faint sounds of the divine spark writing us a letter of love in the concrete humanness of our sufferers as we hear the disclosure of their story, of who and why they are, of the pains and hurts of being them. As we grow in our regard for suffering others, we may come to feel for them as though they were our sons or daughters, our brothers or sisters. This tender regard can progress to experiencing them as our very other selves. In this experience, we see that others’ suffering is their own and not ours, and that their relationships, personal history, traditions, and so on, are distinctly theirs and not ours. Yet, somehow we complement and complete each other; somehow we are one.
And so the whole communal aspect of the healing process should be approached just so—as a big family. This brother with cancer, this one with heart problems, this sister with leukemia, this little brother with AIDS.
Two young men with AIDS died last week. During their long difficult struggle dying, they came to know the heart of rejection. They lived at the center of isolation. They were perceived as biological founts of contagion, viewed with suspicion, distrust, contempt, and hatred. Never have I encountered such despair as gripped these young men. The last one to die was fecally incontinent. His mother cared for him. Her family and other children shunned them. They had no money, no food, no gas. Their washing machine broke.
And where was I?
The second one, a Catholic, was discharged from the hospital, and died at home shortly afterwards without even the spiritual consolation of his Church!
And where was I?
An 85 year-old man who provided care for his Alzheimer’s-stricken wife, as well as caring for an invalid in-law, fell and broke his ribs; he was told that he could not drive again. Faced with the impossible situation of caring for two invalids and not able even to care for himself, he despairingly took a rife and shot his wife, his in-law, and himself.
And where was l?
Let us today answer that question. Let us commit ourselves to a new beginning—let us form ourselves into a community of prayer, love, compassion and tender concern for one another.
Let us become a humane people concerned about the least among us. Let us become a humane society seeking the common good. Let us become a humane world espousing the survival, nurturing, unity, and needs of all humanity.
Copyright 1986
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