Suffering & God's love
Garvey, John
JOHN GARVEY SUFFERING & GOO'S LOVE Given to the just & the unjust alike 0 ur society is probably the first in which we agree to keep what matters most to us out of our common dis course, because...
...A young woman asked me to visit her fiance, a young man who has been in a coma for sixteen months...
...She talks with him, reads to him, prays with him, turns him in his bed to make sure he doesn't get bedsores...
...If one thing is central to the understanding of all great religious traditions it is that there is something divided and strange, something broken and unhappy about the world we find ourselves in, and if this can be corrected at ail (not at all a sure thing) it will be at a cost...
...Just or unjust, we will all be crucified...
...it will involve a struggle, even death...
...There is something prophetic about this kind of love-it shows us something we need to know about God's love for us, for all the suffering world...
...What is constant is her patient love, a love which hopes, but without demanding results, a love which endures without any clear expectation...
...The irony is that the tragedy lies in the avoidance of the tragic...
...Traditional societies could put the stories that tell us this truth at the center, even while they avoided its implications at every opportunity...
...The successful sale of a commodity demands that the thing we are being sold--cars, whiskey, brand name clothes, bottled water, religioncan satisfy us and make us whole now, and we will not be happy (being happy is all-important) unless we buy, or buy into, what is being offered for sale...
...She goes to see him for hours every day after work, in a hospital where there are many like him, a bleak place where there are few visitors...
...Our culture tells us this at every turn, and the consequences are tragic...
...She was such a good person As if goodness were a hedge against suffering...
...The first of the Buddha's four noble truths is that existence is suffering...
...I have been to see him with her a couple of times, to anoint him and pray with her and with his family...
...Combine the secular basis of liberal democracy with capitalism, and you get a society in which civic order and the need for distraction become the most valued commodities...
...To redeem us he had to come to where we are, and the Cross is where humanity is...
...And we have been given the power to forgive and be forgiven, to love, even to die for the sake of another...
...This is already a miracle...
...The marketplace, not only of ideas but of commodities or rather, ideas become commodities, and the ones we like best are the ones we accept as true...
...You hear it constantly...
...Our society turns the ad volume up and asks us to look at anything but the one unavoidable fact: There is, for all of us, a 100-percent mortality rate, and all the fitness centers and laptops and cell-phones and snacks and sneakers will not help us out of that hole...
...The differences involved in religion divide us, and what unites us is considered much more important-but what is that, in our secular society...
...JOHN GARVEY SUFFERING & GOO'S LOVE Given to the just & the unjust alike 0 ur society is probably the first in which we agree to keep what matters most to us out of our common dis course, because it could divide us...
...The greater mystery is that at the base of suffering there is something profoundly moving and even hopeful in a way which is hard to explain, and perhaps it can only be experienced...
...But none of this has to do with the satisfaction of our immediate desire, and our culture-based as it is in commerce-is established on the creation of new desires and the illusion that they can be satisfied...
...We have crucified the Lord of glory, torment one another, are tormented...
...In traditional societies, one religion usually reigned...
...The suffering of the just is an ancient mystery, at least as old as Job...
...She will wait, and nothing may happen...
...But the price paid for this is that we see religion placed in the realm of the subjective, a matter of taste...
...So many people find it hard to accept the absolute unavoidability of suffering...
...The separation of church and state has at least freed religion from its alliance with coercive power, and where no particular advantage can be gained from religious affiliation, a faith may be chosen cleanly and honestly...
...Commonweal 7 Septeml,er 12, 1997...
...Why did she have to suffer...
...The Resurrection, which gives us hope, has happened only to him, so that he can judge the rest of us mercifully-but the truth of our world, this side of resurrection, is Golgotha...
...God's mercy falls on the just and unjust alike, and so does suffering...
...She hopes for a miracle, but her love doesn't depend on one...
...members of minority communities were tolerated at best, or they were persecuted or slaughtered...
...It shows us a truer picture of the world than our temporary comfort...
...At the center of the gospel message we find Jesus crucified...
Vol. 124 • September 1997 • No. 15
