My church is offering a spiritual growth opportunity that involves quiet meditation and prayer, an opportunity to journal and reflect, and discussion of Pope Francis’ book, Let Us Dream: The Path to a Better Future. Quite time for prayer away from the busyness of daily life? Guidance on how we can envision a brighter future post-covid? Sign me up!
I started reading the book in preparation for the first meeting next week. Wow! What a hidden gem. In it, Pope Francis discusses the challenges that the current pandemic has thrust upon us and encourages us to let our pain be a vehicle to something more, something different, something richer.
Crisis as Sifter
In the opening lines of the prologue he writes, “To enter into crisis is to be sifted. Your categories and ways of thinking get shaken up; your priorities and lifestyles are challenged. You cross a threshold, either by your own choice or by necessity, because there are crises, like the one we’re going through, that you can’t avoid.”
Crisis thrusts us into a process of being sifted. Those words were jarring to me, probably because I recognized the profound truth in them. Being forced through the sieve of brutal life experience has a way of removing the lumps of egoic hubris and the clods of misplaced self-sufficiency. Pope Francis explained it better: “The basic rule of crisis is that you don’t come out of it the same. You get through it, you come out better or worse, but never the same.”
In this Sunday’s gospel reading, Jesus encounters a deaf man who also struggles with speech. Two elements of this encounter are particularly interesting. First, Jesus very literally dives into the man’s pain with him. “He put his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue” (Mark 7: 33). And second, instead of saying “be healed” or “speak and hear clearly now,” Jesus says, “Be opened” (34).
Letting Pain Transform Us
I think Jesus is giving us some guidance on how to make the inevitable pain of our lives into something useful and even transformative. The first thing we need to do is dive into the marrow of the suffering, both our own and that of others. Why is service to those in pain such a life-altering experience? It’s because by putting our fingers into the ears of those who suffer, we become one with them. We don’t just see them “over there.” We walk their journey along with them. In doing so, we venerate our common humanity, which can be another powerful sieve that extracts the dead membrane of self-importance we usually seek to defend if not promote.
And the second thing we need to do is be open. We may need to give up our pre-conceived notions of what “healing” looks like. We may need to set aside our expectations. We may need to open ourselves to the possibility that what God has in store for us is greater than what we want for ourselves.
If I had my choice, I wouldn’t be “sifted” at all. Intellectually, I know that going through pain can be transformative. It can lead us to new understandings of ourselves, our world, and our relationship with God. But left to my own devices, I’ll push the Easy Button every time. Even when it’s not in my best interest, I’ll usually opt for the path of least resistance.
When We Have No Choice
Maybe that’s why life doesn’t always give us a choice. Like it or not, maybe our life experiences need to act as that sieve that will cull the inauthentic from the gut-wrenchingly genuine. Maybe God knows that sometimes, the Easy Button can’t be an option.
Like Pope Francis has written, the crises of our time are the great sifting mechanism of our lives. Our pre-conceived categories and modes of thinking have been shaken. Our priorities and lifestyle choices have been challenged. We have crossed a threshold we could not avoid.
The choice before us is clear. Do we pursue our own agenda, our own self-preservation? Or do we dive into the raw suffering and be open to what it calls us to? This week’s gospel seems to provide a clear answer. Dive in. Feel it. Feel all of it, even when – especially when – it hurts the most. And be open – to the voice of God, the call to growth, that tiny seed of potential that tugs at our hearts and pulls at our minds and seeks to erupt into new life against all odds. The choice before us is to remain closed in order to be safe or to “be opened” into the crazy mystery of life in God.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In