Showing posts with label love loss & healing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love loss & healing. Show all posts

Monday, November 05, 2018

Why does losing a loved one hurt so much?

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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A loved one dies and we are suddenly plunged into depths of pain and suffering we had no idea existed.... Why does this happen to us? Why does our loving God allow us to endure such agony? How long will it last? Will any good come of it?

Such questions only scratch the surface of all that goes on in our lives when we experience serious losses. What it all means varies considerably, but we can catch clues from just a few key reference points: myself - the other who has died - our relationship to each other - our openness or not to God's presence, action, and love.

Who am I and what has been going on in my life?

Who was this person who has just died and what was happening in their life?

How were we towards one another and what does their death mean to me?

Did either of us make room for God in our own life and in this relationship or not?

BITTER SORROW

When such pain of loss tastes rather bitter, it is often an indication that our God is allowing us to catch a glimpse of something not quite right in this situation, and the bitterness is coming from that matter or issue that was or is wrong.

If in any of the key questions above there has been any selfishness, any sinful or unholy desires, anything evil, or unjust motives or manipulation, or anything at all that was evil, unholy, or selfish; then these realities are quite likely to manifest themselves through a bitter quality in the sense of loss.

As a simple example to illustrate this point, let us say that I cared for an elderly rich person, but because I was in dire financial straits myself, my motivation in caring for this elderly person was tainted by my survival instinct and secret desire for some monetary gain in return for my help. Fear of not receiving anything or not enough could generate a bitterness in my sense of loss.

If this elderly rich person for whom I cared was not a nice person but nasty, angry, even cruel, and by the grace of God I still loved them; then all through the time of my care for them, I could have accumulated a taint of bitterness affecting even what might have been in me a pure motivation to care for them.

If upon the death of the one I had cared for and loved their immediate family were to step in and unceremoniously cast me aside - as though what I had done was irrelevant to them - then this too could render bitter my sense of loss.

As you can see, at any point, any factor of impure motives, or evil intentions, or sinfulness, on the part of any of the parties involved could turn bitter any sense of loss which I might experience after having cared for a person whom I loved and who has now died.

Such bitterness is the kind of experience and feeling that almighty God wants to use in order to draw my attention to those dark factors; so that I might repent of any sin of which I may be guilty, that I might dissociate myself from any dark factor in the motivations of others and pray for them as I would pray even for enemies, and that I might allow the Lord to purify my intentions and my soul in order to become freer to love with a pure heart.

SWEET SORROW

Perhaps one of the sweetest kinds of loss might take place when a beloved elderly person dies - one who had become a pure soul - and you who have been caring for him or her out of love experience deep and intense pain of loss.

In such a case we can easily understand how you, the care givers, would be in pain because the great love you exchanged with that elderly pure soul has come to a temporary end, temporary because one day, in the Lord's good time, you shall be reunited with him or her in the Father's House. The pain may give you pause or bring confusion and doubt, temporarily, but make no mistake. Now you are tasting a glimpse of Heaven... the only difference is that when it is our proper time to enter into the presence of the most Holy Trinity - the Father and Jesus his Son and the Holy Spirit - on that day we will be fully purified of human imperfection, sinfulness, and woundedness - and we will be able to endure the full intensity of the love of God without any pain.

That will be then, but for now, whenever God's love touches us, there can be pain, but it is like the pain caused by a doctor in the process of healing us. The cure often hurts for a while until the infection is completely cleansed and health returns. Remember when you were a girl or boy and you fell and deeply scraped knees and elbows and it hurt like hell? Then the medicine burned like crazy and bandages were applied. They continued to hurt, the wounds, until you got closer to healing. The first sign of healing was that the scabs began to tickle; so you began to pick at them even though your Mom told you not to. If you picked hard enough a scab came off and the wound hurt all over again, and you learned your lesson.

You are right. Your elderly charge was a pure soul. She / He lived long enough and was humble enough to allow God to purify her / him from all life's hurts, faults, and sins, and all that was left was a child-like soul in love with God and with people. She / He accepted to receive love, and did so with such a pure heart, that God's love radiated out from her / him to anyone who came close to her / him with pure intentions.

These wounds which you now suffer are glorious wounds... witnesses of God's forgiving, purifying, and healing love at work in you. All that God expects of you is to be docile, to trust, and to gently accept these sufferings as proof that the Holy Spirit is at work within you, distilling the pure life-giving love of the Father into the deepest recesses of your souls, cleaning out any gunk that may be lurking in those deep dark corners and admitting the pure light of eternity to make everything into light and love.

This is the most perfect form of patience - accepting to endure the pain caused by the purifying love of God, as in this case right now - or accepting to endure the pain which accompanies pure intentions and good actions, or accepting to endure what others cause us to suffer in order to love them. This is the example Jesus gave us when He accepted to endure the suffering we caused Him, and He did so in order to reveal to us the true nature of the pure love that God has for us.

All of this is the manifest action of the lordship of Jesus within you because you have been putting your trust in Him, you have been believing in Him, you have been accepting his call to follow Him and serve Him in others, like the elderly pure soul who just died, and now you are becoming more like Him, the One who wept over ancient Jerusalem because she would not receive his love. You have been giving the Lord Jesus permission to do his work with the Holy Spirit within you - which most of the time goes unnoticed - but on this occasion you feel pain at what the Lord is doing within you, purifying and cleansing. Rejoice and be glad, because this pain is not the kind that comes from hell, but rather the kind that prepares you for Heaven; in fact, it is even now a glimpse of Heaven which is so intense and wonderful that, for now, it hurts, but the hurt will not endure... while the love itself will endure without end.

Please feel free to share these words with whomever you will....

Peace to you and your family.

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
 

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Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Evil, pain, suffering - how can these be God's will for us?

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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One most awesome truth, and at times a little unnerving, is that nothing happens to us except that almighty God permits it.

It is a heresy to think that Satan and the rebellious angels exercise runaway power, as though the Creator had lost control over them. Part of the truth is that angels are not changeable as we are - once they make a decision it is final and forever.

While they work against God's will; God is so almighty that He continually extends his power over all the harm they do in order to bring greater good out of it. It helps us in our reflection to remember that our Creator God sustains in existence the whole universe - with its hundreds of billions of galaxies containing hundreds of billions of stars with their countless planets. On a smaller scale, our Creator God sustains each of us and all living things in existence with the breath of life. In a true sense, our every breath is coming to us with vitality from the most Holy Trinity... an awesome and oh so intimate thought.... Into this mind stretching vast scenario enters evil, temptation, sin, pain, and suffering of myriad sorts....

You may not now be suffering anything, dear Reader, or perhaps you are, but it is likely that you have at least at one time suffered. When I who write these thoughts indicate "you", I of course include myself; for we share what we call the human condition. So, whether what has happened to you has simply happened naturally, or whether there came forth any shadows of hell to do you harm, or whether what you suffer is the result of your own human frailty, or a combination of the above; it remains true that God has allowed it to happen and that He fully intends to make use of your suffering to bring about the best for you and for others through you.

It is true for all of us what Saint Paul came to understand as a grace of revelation from the Lord Jesus: what he suffered and what we suffer does indeed complete what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. The human Jesus has finished suffering and is seated at the right hand of the Father, but because He is also Son of God, He unites to Himself in the Holy Spirit all the baptized until the end of the world; so that mystical Body of Christ of which we are a member lives on and is bringing to completion in each of us personally and in all of us together the life which Jesus Himself lived while on Earth.

This is how it happens that all that we live and endure and love acquires infinite value in the collective Body of Christ, who continues his mission to bring the light of the Father's love and the peace of the Holy Spirit to all of mankind in all places and at all times. This is the beauty, value, and significance of the Church of Jesus and its vast and every expanding collective life on Earth, in Purgatory, and in Heaven.

The opportunity we each have at every moment to be aware of these awesome truths, to offer freely and deliberately and generously and confidently to the Father's love our whole hearted consent, and in this way, to allow the Lord Jesus to join us to Himself in an ever increasingly intimate union of mind, heart, body, and soul....

In prayer we visit, as it were, with the three divine Persons of the most Holy Trinity, welcoming them within us and attending to them as we would to the most precious and important guests.... In this way, we renew moment by moment our consent to the Father to bring about in us his most holy will through the action of his beloved Son Jesus Christ our Lord, in the power, peace, and love of the Holy Spirit.

Peace to you and your family in your ongoing convalescence....

                Pax + Caritas, Fr. Gilles

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

----------------------------------------------------------------

© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
 

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Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Christians still suffer, but with hope in God - four ways to better endure the intense pain of loss and separation

My purpose in these posts is to bring a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

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It is an inescapable reality to both enjoy life and to suffer it. Our very capacity to enjoy makes us capable of suffering to the same degree. As difficult as it is to personally suffer from various conditions and circumstances, It is so very difficult to stand by helplessly as someone we love suffers. I know this from personal experience - it is unavoidable for anyone who loves - how difficult it is when in the face of a loved one in pain all our desire might be to make it better or simply take all the pain away. From our roman catholic and orthodox Christian faith traditions we have come to find four ways to better endure the intense pain of loss and separation, all the more painful when it is compounded by sudden and inexplicable tragedy.

The first "way" is common to all Christians. We remember that God so loved us that the Father sent his willing Son to come among us that we might no longer be alone or struggle against such great odds by ourselves. We realize we still have Jesus as our captain, our champion, just a step ahead of us. He braved the worst of what can befall any of us and shows us the way forward. He lifts our gaze up to see our Father and his immeasurable love for us. There is no better comfort than to feel something of that love.

The second way is also common to all Christians... it is Jesus Himself. He is the living Word of God - the divine Son - and we can draw great strength and comfort from pondering this Word in the Sacred Scriptures. At times as we ponder and pray over lines from the Psalms, Proverbs, Gospels, Letters, and so on... it is as though He speaks to us, to me, personally.

With this living food our spirit mobilizes our flesh to go on and take a few more steps.... A growing intimacy that the Word brings about within us lifts us up into the living God in ways that words cannot tell, as Saint Paul put it, and though our pain remains, it is slowly absorbed into God. In ways that are unique for each person, our pain can become "glorious" or "radiant" as Jesus' own wounds have become. That is, we find we are able to experience comfort, hope, confidence of being loved, even hope for the future - while still caught in the pain of our losses - and this simultaneous suffering and unearthly joy becomes life giving to others around us as they too behold what is happening to us and they get caught up in it....

The third way is partly common to all Christians and is also Jesus from a different perspective, as still present and active among us and within us. Baptism is common to all Christians, a new life, an infusion of divine life in us by the presence and work of the Holy Trinity, that begins to reshape us into children of God. There is a true yet ever mysterious pouring out of the divine life of the Trinity into us and an ongoing presence and action of the divine persons that enables us to progressively experience, think, speak, act, and behave more and more as Jesus did. This too becomes life giving for others to see. We are given much comfort and hope as we see the living God so mysteriously yet so tangibly be present and act within us, lifting us up, slowly transforming us, and also acting for others through us.

What our catholic and orthodox tradition offers us as seven "sacraments" are stable and life giving mysterious encounters with the living God in the person of Jesus. As we stumble in our weak human flesh and fall in our personal sinfulness, we encounter Jesus in a personal way - much as people in the Gospels did - in what we call Reconciliation. As we confess our sins before a priest, it is to Jesus that we confess, and through the priest it is Jesus Himself who says to us "Your sins are forgiven you. Go, and sin no more." Because much of our grief is pain exacerbated by our sins and often by regrets, experiencing personally Jesus forgiving touch is incredibly healing and comforting.

In our experience of the Holy Eucharist, the Bread of Life and Chalice of Salvation are so real, so very much the living Body and Blood of Christ, that we receive nothing less than a "transfusion" of divine life when we receive Jesus in Holy Communion. He takes us by the hand and enables us to more willingly and eagerly give our life for others as He does for us. Confirmation strengthens us in our walk of faith much as the Father's voice did for Jesus, calling Him his beloved Son. When we are sick or injured, the Anointing of the Sick brings us the healing touch of Jesus himself... this is how we experience it. The sixth and seventh sacraments or mysterious encounters with the living God are vocational: Holy Orders in which Jesus makes for himself deacons, priests, and bishops to pastor his people, and Marriage to introduce married couples into a life of Matrimony to experience the mystery of God's spousal love for his Church, for all of us baptized, as for his Bride. All of these are the third way.

The fourth way is about the presence and action of the Holy Spirit, whom in the creed we call "Lord and Giver of life", and of whom Saint Paul had much to say, the promise of Jesus. We believe it is the Holy Spirit who enables us to perceive the presence and action of the Holy Trinity within us and to cooperate with God for our own good and transformation as well as for the good of others. As we become more familiar with the three divine persons, as they progressively reveal themselves to us personally, it is not that our sufferings in this life are less, if anything our capacity to suffer them is enhanced - our sensibility or sensitivity increasing causes the pain in a way to become more "exquisite" - however, the increasing place of the Holy Trinity within us and our progressively being drawn more deeply into the life and love of the Trinity begins to make our personal suffering pale or diminish in proportion.

Our entire perspective comes to life and changes. Like God, we also become better able to tolerate the pain of others, to see it is their journey that they travel as they must, but we can with peace allow them to go on suffering and walking on, knowing they are not alone, that their God is with them, and that somehow, our willingness to bear some of their pain in some way diminishes the intensity of it for them. They know and sense that God also comforts them through us.

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My purpose in these posts is to help spread the contributions of a variety of Christian and other writers in a desire to share significant writings that in my estimation contribute to the common good and directly or indirectly give glory to God and extend the Lord's work of salvation to all of humanity. G.S.

----------------------------------------------------------------

© 2004-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal  QC
© 2004-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
 

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