Resolve on Balance

My son told me before he returned to college that he hasn't seen photos of [St.] Padre Pio smiling. I told him I have seen a couple. The conversation arose when I mentioned a couple of priests from my past who told me to have more joy. From everything I've read of Padre Pio's early letters, he suffered, suffered, suffered. I've read biographies about Padre Pio in which others have commented that he'd laugh and enjoy practical jokes. Doesn't seem to me like he joked around much at all, from what HE wrote. I wonder that biographers of great and unusual souls, such as canonized saints. strive to make these folks seem "balanced" and "ordinary." I don't see how they were or could be.

Biographers also try to make them seem "simple." Does this sound simple? "What is abjection if not obscurity and powerlessness? Love yourself in that state for the love of Him who wants it so, and you will love your own abjection, which is the highest degree of humility."

Or, how about this, for the sake of joy? "The joy within me was so intense and so deep that I was not able to contain it; the most exquisite tears flowed down my cheeks. Truly, a human being cannot comprehend that when heaven pours into a heart, this wretched, weak, mortal heart in exile cannot bear it without crying."

And there's lots more of these statements from my most dear Padre Pio! Bug off, biographers who try to make him something he is not! He suffered, for Christ sake. He hurt. He hurt physically and spiritually and emotionally and psychologically and mentally.

He bled from open wounds. His was a soul tormented by being different, by being extremely sensitive and seeing through the things of this world, particularly through the foolish facades of people. He suffered from intense comprehension that he existed with Christ partially--as much as an embodied soul could--but yet not with Him totally. He was surely exhausted by it all. Who could he converse with who'd understand?

My son was trying to console me that I am not jumping-up-and-down with joy. He said, "We have some photos of you smiling, Mom, but how can you smile when you hurt? When you keep having disappointments and cruddy things happen? Look at all the trouble you get into! Well--even if you don't mean to, and it's not your fault, you gotta admit you get into tough spots."

This morning I mentioned how weak I am against painful reminders of hurts and disappointments. The priest told me it is all right and even wise to avoid these situations and people, that I cannot rush the healing process. Yes, it is as if I've had a major accident--was run over by a church van filled to the topped-off-tank. Surgeries later, I'm still weak and wary. I'm taking vitamins, eating veggies, and trying to rehabilitate. What would I think of a dog who, beaten repeatedly, hangs around the back door for more? Dumb dog.

So I mentioned trying a different environment altogether. The confessor asked if that would really solve anything? "No, " I replied, "I can never escape the physical pain, and it is the physical pain which depletes my reserve of resilience. There is no running away from this body. Only physical death will relieve me." He agreed. But I am to stay away from the wrong back doors in the neighborhood, for sure.

So, isn't my job here done? That's why I am asking questions of God. I need answers. I need to know if the puzzle pieces of existing and spiritual experiences, both, create a picture of suffering validity. Is it real? Then the priest says that even pictures are "real." Well, I mean, is the picture contrived or created in an attempt to find a raison d'etre to the suffering? We don't get anywhere on this except comment that perhaps I am too much on the other side of the equal sign in this formula, when it is good to have the numbers in place to add up, to equal something.

Ah, so it is all right to seek an answer? And this after he said God sometimes might just want us to experience things without analyzing. I wonder. What good is a number 2 and a number 4 just to look at in a column? He says there is something good about knowing that numbers add to something the same each time they are added. So, maybe, then, it is good for me to add up the here-and-now experiences with the spiritual experiences, and see if they add up to something, to the same answer that others who have suffered, for Christ sake.

If not, I say to the confessor, surely I can find more pleasant distractions while I wait out this constant physical pain. Why distractions? Well, then it gets into being, not doing. Distractions do, don't they? And I've already explored this.

It is said that Padre Pio prayed the rosary constantly during the day (and into his late nights). He existed in contemplation, and others viewed a body walking around, talking, listening, celebrating Mass, hearing confessions, and snapping at obtuse and fatuitous Catholics.

Who could blame him? Some tried, but I'd never blame anything about him because he hurt all the time. A couple of photos with him smiling are gut trophies. A whole series of letters to a spiritual friend and spiritual directors beg to be allowed to die, beg for prayers--long novenas of prayers--begging Jesus to let him die. Finally, at some point, he does die and exists in form that others see with their eyes, but he has died to this world and waits it out, in contemplation with outer manifestations of doing, until his physical, active body joins his contemplative, soul body.

I, too, must stop feeling guilty about not doing. I cannot do and be. Perhaps I can be, and in the being, look as if I'm doing.

Phooey on balance. It was suggested to me earlier this week that I fight against the "extremes." It is the very giving way to extreme, such as Padre Pio placed the key of his soul into the keyhole of suffering, and unlocked the door to the contemplative room, that will save my sanity as well as my soul.

Constant pain is the breast which succors the extreme. Once that pain is nourished in the extreme, the soul sits like a weaned child on its mother's lap, in that room beyond balance.

Don't fight. Embrace the extreme. Pain requires it. Suck fully of that breast, that cup of suffering, the chalice of blood.