When we were young and said the rosary , I used to think the words of the Hail Holy queen were very severe, 'Mourning and weeping in this valley of tears'. In fact these words were written by a German gentleman Saint Herman who knew a very considerable amount about suffering himself. Herman was a hunchback an had to hobble about with a walking stick. Any saint you will ever read about had to face great sufferings. In fact you can pretty much say the greater the sufferings, the greater the saint. As the old saying goes, great cross, great crown. I used to think that suffering was a kind of bolt on extra to the spiritual life, kind of the cream on the cake. But its not, the cross lies at the very centre of prayer. In my own life I have never felt closer to Christ than when I stood at His feet at the cross. I think this especially sets us as Christians apart. The Budhists for instance see suffering as Maya, as illusion. Others see it as a punishment, or something to be avoided. In fact it draws us closer to Christ, it is purgative in that it cleanses us of our sins and it is redemptive in that it helps us bear the Cross of Christ and lead others to Redemption. it is the signal path to Holiness, the door to heaven. The very centre of suffering is that it should appear to us as meaningless and hopeless. so that we cry out with the Jesus, 'My God, my God why have you forsaken me?' When we suffer we run into the Sacred heart of Christ, we race on the Pilgrim Path of Prayer. Jesus and Mary stand with us at the foot of the Cross. We are not alone, we are surrounded on every side by a crowd of heavenly witnesses, urging us on as we race for the prize.
The Cross I too experience a deep peace and presence of Our Lord within me through the crosses in my daily life. Without suffering there could never be a cross nor could Our Lord become a part of our lives, and thus, we would be separated from Him and not know Him. Many wonder why suffering is necessary in life in order to find and know Our Lord. They don't stop to think that this is a sinful world in desperate need of repentence. The world is separated from God in many ways, and in all honesty, we have been offending God for a long time. We must suffer alongside Our Lord to pay the heavy price for all of our sinfulness. How else could we cleanse our souls if we don't pick up our cross and follow Our Lord? At Mass today, Father asked that we make 2008 the year of holiness in our lives. I have experienced that the cross is at the center of the holiness that he was talking to us about because this is where Our Lord Jesus is to be found. Sister Mother Teresa was a pefect example of one who knew the beauty of Our Lord through the cross. Yes, I agree. The cross most certainly does lie at the center of prayer. Prayer without the cross would pretty much be empty words. A Clement
There is a cancer hospital where I work, Clem and I often see the patients outside. I have often thought that the death process that folks go through as they die is very similiar to the process of prayer itself. It is the Way of the Cross, through Good Friday to the Resurrection...a letting go.. The late Doctor Elizabeth Kubler-Ross spoke of this on her work on the death process which has become standard in palliative care; The stages are: 1. Denial: The initial stage: "It can't be happening." 2. Anger: "Why me? It's not fair." 3. Bargaining: "Just let me live to see my children graduate." 4. Depression: "I'm so sad, why bother with anything?" 5. Acceptance: "It's going to be OK." Kübler-Ross originally applied these stages to any form of catastrophic personal loss (job, income, freedom). This also includes the death of a loved one and divorce. Kübler-Ross also claimed these steps do not necessarily come in the order noted above, nor are all steps experienced by all patients, though she stated a person will always experience at least two. Others have noticed that any significant personal change can elicit these stages. For example, experienced criminal defense attorneys are aware that defendants who are facing stiff sentences, yet have no defenses or mitigating factors to lessen their sentences, often experience the stages. Accordingly, they must get to the acceptance stage before they are prepared to plead guilty. Additionally, the change in circumstances does not always have to be a negative one, just significant enough to cause a grief response to the loss (Scire, 2007). Accepting a new work position, for example, causes one to lose their routine, workplace friendships, familiar drive to work, or even customary lunch sources. But Doctor Elizabeth was also responsible for much of the early work on the Near Death Experience with Doctor Raymond Moody. I always loved her stories about how she got interested in this. My most dramatic and unforgettable case of "ask and you will be given," and also of a NDE, was a man who was in the process of being picked up by his entire family for a Memorial Day weekend drive to visit some relatives out of town. While driving in the family van to pick him up, his parents-in-law with his wife and eight children were hit by a gasoline tanker. The gasoline poured over the car and burned his entire family to death. After being told what happened, this man remained in a state of total shock and numbness for several weeks. He stopped working and was unable to communicate. To make a long story short, he became a total bum, drinking half-a-gallon of whisky a day, trying heroin and other drugs to numb his pain. He was unable to hold a job for any length of time and ended up literally in the gutter. It was during one of my hectic traveling tours, having just finished the second lecture in a day on life after death, that a hospice group in Santa Barbara asked me to give yet another lecture. After my preliminary statements, I became aware that I am very tired of repeating the same stories over and over again. And I quietly said to myself: "Oh God, why don't you send me somebody from the audience who has had a NDE and is willing to share it with the audience so I can take a break? They will have a first-hand experience instead of hearing my old stories over and over again." At that very moment the organizer of the group gave me a little slip of paper with an urgent message on it. It was a message from a man from the bowery who begged to share his NDE with me. I took a little break and sent a messenger to his bowery hotel. A few moments later, after a speedy cab ride, the man appeared in the audience. Instead of being a bum as he had described himself, he was a rather well dressed, very sophisticated man. He went up on the stage and without having a need to evaluate him, I encouraged him to tell the audience what he needed to share. He told how he had been looking forward to the weekend family reunion, how his entire family had piled into a family van and were on the way to pick him up when this tragic accident occurred which burned his entire family to death. He shared the shock and the numbness, the utter disbelief of suddenly being a single man, of having had children and suddenly becoming childless, of living without a single close relative. He told of his total inability to come to grips with it. He shared how he changed from a money-earning, decent, middle-class husband and father to a total bum, drunk every day from morning to night, using every conceivable drug and trying to commit suicide in every conceivable way, yet never able to succeed. His last recollection was that after two years of literally bumming around, he was lying on a dirt road at the edge of a forest, drunk and stoned as he called it, trying desperately to be reunited with his family. Not wanting to live, not even having the energy to move out of the road when he saw a big truck coming toward him and running over him. It was at this moment that he watched himself in the street [sic], critically injured, while he observed the whole scene of the accident from a few feet above. It was at this moment that his family appeared in front of him, in a glow of light with an incredible sense of love. They had happy smiles on their faces, and simply made him aware of their presence, not communicating in any verbal way but in the form of thought transference, sharing with him the joy and happiness of their present existence. This man was not able to tell us how long this reunion lasted. He was so awed by his family's health, their beauty, their radiance and their total acceptance of this present situation, by their unconditional love. He made a vow not to touch them, not to join them, but to re-enter his physical body so that he could share with the world what he had experienced. It would be a form of redemption for his two years of trying to throw his physical life away. It was after this vow that he watched the truck driver carry his totally injured body into the car. He saw an ambulance speeding to the scene of the accident, he was taken to the hospital's emergency room and he finally re-entered his physical body, tore off the straps that were tied around him and literally walked out of the emergency room. He never had delirium tremens or any aftereffects from the heavy abuse of drugs and alcohol. He felt healed and whole, and made a commitment that he would not die until he had the opportunity of sharing the existence of life after death with as many people as would be willing to listen. It was after reading a newspaper article about my appearance in Santa Barbara that he sent a message to the auditorium. By allowing him to share with my audience he was able to keep the promise he made at the time of his short, temporary, yet happy reunion with his entire family. We do not know what happened to this man since then, but I will never forget the glow in his eyes, the joy and deep gratitude he experienced, that he was led to a place where, without doubt and questioning, he was allowed to stand up on the stage and share with a group of hundreds of hospice workers the total knowledge and awareness that our physical body is only the shell that encloses our immortal self. It's good to see Doctors turning to the the great spiritual truths we learn so deeply that suffering and death are not to be feared or run away from, they are part of life and God's plan.
