Good Friday

When I was at the Queen of Apostles Retreat Centre for the Council of General Synod meetings, I noticed the retreat centre had a shelf of books for sale, and I bought one entitled The Way of Suffering.  It has short reflections on suffering by a variety of writers, some secular and some religious, some Christian and some from other religions.

It included an excerpt from Stephen Colbert, the brilliant and highly successful comedian, talking about suffering in an interview with Anderson Cooper.

I was intrigued by it, and watched the interview, which I recommend.

I had known that when he was a 10 year old child, Colbert had suffered the death of his father and two of his brothers in a sudden plane crash.  It plunged him and his mother into deep grief.  For him, it was a grief in which he didn’t care about anything anymore, not school, not sports, not friends.  As a teenager, he escaped into reading all the works of Tolkein.  He quotes Tolkein twice in the interview. The first is when Gandalf says, “Always after a defeat and a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.” 

“I wish it need not have happened in my time” said Frodo.

“So do I” said Gandalf.  And so do all who live to see such times.  But that is not for them to decide.  All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.

As an adult, a friend who had suffered the death of a child asked him: How did your mother do this?  He said, “It had to do with love and it had to do with loving God.  I have the crucifix on my wall that was hers, which I inherited when she died.  And she would pray to Our Lady and say, she knows what it is to lose a child.  And her example of her faith stays with me.  And we’re asked to accept the world God gives us. And to accept it with love.  If God is everywhere and God is in everything, then the world as it is, is all just an expression of God and his love and you have to accept it with gratitude, because what is the option? what is the option?

Colbert also quotes Tolkein saying “What punishments of God are not gifts” 

Cooper asks him about that and says, “You told an interviewer that you were able to love the thing you most wish had not happened.  You went on to say, “What punishments of God are not gifts?”  Do you really believe that? 

Colbert replies, “Yes.  It’s a gift to exist. It’s a gift to exist. And with existence comes suffering.  There’s no escaping that.  But I didn’t learn it, that I’m grateful for the thing I most wish hadn’t happened, I realized it.  And it’s an oddly guilty feeling.  I don’t want it to have happened.  I want it to not have happened.  But if you’re grateful for your life, which I think is a positive thing to do.  Not everybody is, and I’m not always.  But it’s the most positive thing to do. Then you have to be grateful for all of it.  You can’t pick and choose what you’re grateful for.  And then, what do you get from loss?  You get an awareness of other people’s loss, which allows you to connect with that other person, which allows you to love more deeply and to understand what it’s like to be a human being, if it’s true that all humans suffer.  At a young age I suffered something, so that by the time I was in serious relationships in my life with friends, or with my wife or with my children is that I had some understanding that everyone is suffering and however imperfectly acknowledge their suffering and to connect with them.  To love them in a deep way that not only accepts that all of us suffer, but also then makes you grateful for the fact that you have suffered, so that you can know that about other people.  And that’s what I mean.  It’s about the fullness of your humanity.  What’s the point of being here and being human if you can’t be the most human you can be? I’m not saying best.  Because you can be a bad person and most human.  I want to be the most human I can be. And that involves acknowledging and ultimately being grateful for the things that I wish didn’t happen.  Because they gave me a gift.  And in my tradition that’s the great gift of the sacrifice of Christ.  Is that God does it too.  That you’re really not alone.  God does it too.”

I really value Cobert’s insights here. I’m someone whose experiences of suffering have  been fairly mild and fairly ordinary.  And I have a hard time talking about the suffering in our lives and especially the suffering of the crucifixion, without saying something sounds either glib or horrifying.  And at the same time, I have the sense that not to enter as deeply as we can into the suffering of the crucifixion is to miss something essential about God’s love.  All of existence is a gift, even the painful parts.  And it is a gift to us that we are not alone. God suffers too.  And that suffering is the gift of immense love.