Teach Me Your Suffering

A prayer for the Church and the world.

Most readers of Human Flourishing are aware that I am Catholic, though the focus of my writings here tends to be secular rather than spiritual themes. However, today I feel compelled to share with you some thoughts on suffering—and a prayer that the world needs to learn if we are endure difficult times ahead and overcome our adversaries. I ask that my non-Christian readers consider this post with an open mind and heart. In another recent post, I introduced these themes by sharing my remarks on the occasion of receiving an award from the Tepeyac Leadership Institute. Consider listening to that 9-minute talk if you have not yet heard it.

In those remarks, I predicted that—regardless of recent political developments in the United States—there is suffering in store for us. “But that is good,” I said on that occasion, “for in suffering we can find the Cross, and in the Cross we find God’s love for us. Suffering with Christ is co-redemptive.” I also ventured a prediction: “I anticipate in our lifetime a great battle—perhaps it will be a cultural more than a physical battle, or perhaps it will be both.” As it happens, I now firmly believe it will be both, and not just because of recent international geopolitical developments. I don’t know when this battle will begin—perhaps soon or perhaps in the more distant future—but I believe we must begin preparing for it now. As I explained, “It will be a battle for the family, a battle for the dignity of the human person. We will suffer.” And the battle will only ultimately be won by means of prayer.

We tend to flee suffering, to avoid the cross at all costs. But at the center of the Christian claim is God who became man, and as a man suffered all that could be suffered—for you and for me, for each of us alone and individually. And he taught us not to seek a life of comfort and ease, but to deny ourselves, take up our cross daily and follow him (Luke 9:23). The American “prosperity gospel”—a distortion that infects so many of our parishes, both Catholic and Protestant—is false because it ignores the cross of Christ, which is at the center of our redemption. It’s not that Jesus suffered so we don’t have to; on the contrary, Jesus suffered so that our suffering can unite us to him. We cannot shun the crosses he sends us daily if we want to follow him.

Christians tend to sanitize Christ’s passion. That is why I chose the image above of the bloody crucifixion, which shocks contemporary sensibilities: the corpus on the cross there is a bit closer to what the actual scourging, the crowing with thorns, and the crucifixion would have looked like, as depicted, for example, in the film, The Passion of the Christ. This image is meant to arrest us, to shock, for Christ’s sufferings involved every pain, every agony, every horror—physical and psychological—that any of us have or could possibly experience. In addition to the Gospels, Gibson’s realistic passion film drew upon the mystic Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich’s book, The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which I commend to you for spiritual reading. Henri-Marie Boudon’s classic, The Holy Ways of the Cross, can also help you understand this.

To go deeper into Our Lord’s passion and death, I recommend to you a brief prayer, an aspiration consisting of four simple words, which you can repeat a hundred times every day: Doce me passionem tuum— “teach me your suffering,” or literally, “teach me your passion.” (See the audio of my speech at minute 3:40 for pronunciation of the Latin: the “c” in Doce is pronounced “ch”). As I said on that occasion to my fellow Catholics, “We have all read the Gospels, but perhaps we do not yet really know Christ’s passion. We must learn it. He must teach us. We must live it more deeply in order to find him.” As I explained:

Paradoxically, it is in suffering that we find freedom. It is in Christ’s passion—with all its horrors, all the blood, the dirt, the grit, the sweat, the tears—it is there that we find peace. Interior freedom and interior peace are not found in politics. They are not found in elections, as important as these things are. Freedom and peace are found only in the Cross of Christ. There is no Easter Sunday without Good Friday. Doce me passionem tuum, “Teach me your suffering, Lord.”

Try this simple prayer and see what happens in your life when you begin to pray it. If this aspiration begins to change you for the better—and I think that it will—then consider sharing this post with others.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

---