Listening to God through Pain
They have helped scores of people to navigate life’s stormy seas in the traditional Passionist “front parlor” and retreat house ministry at St. Paul’s Monastery and Retreat House in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Q: In your effort to assist people who come to the Monastery and Retreat House for spiritual counsel for a variety of challenging issues, what basic advice do you find most helpful?
Fr. John: The basic spiritual counsel I give is prayer. . First of all, besides encountering needy Catholics in confession — many of whom have serious problems of anger and resentment, I also meet a variety of faiths in those coming to step-five in twelve-step spirituality programs.
After hearing their stories, I do a meditation on the Passion of Jesus with them if they are Christians or have the faith to recognize God’s presence in Jesus on the cross. I ask them to accept God’s forgiveness, forgive themselves and forgive others in their stories who have hurt them and whose memory may still be hurting them.
I run into chronic anger, very deep at times, which makes it difficult really to forgive something they feel. I ask them if they pray or have prayed for those who have hurt them. Sometimes they say, “Yes.” Often they say, “No, I don’t want to pray for them. I want to kill them.” I tell them to pray for those who hurt them even when they don’t feel like it, citing our Lord’s words: “Pray for those who persecute you.”
I also tell them that Jesus sometimes heals slowly to keep them constantly close to himself and so learn patience. I remind them of Jesus’ words “Ask and you shall receive.”
Fr. Tim: I stress a fundamental faith and trust in God, based on a genuine friendship with Christ. Even for staunch Catholics this is not easy. Patience and scripture readings are helpful.
The Gospel of John 6 and 15, prayerfully pondered, open risky but rewarding results.
Philippians 3 is also a challenge to surrender to a Lord who invades a life, investing it with new meaning and cementing a relationship which puts all else in true perspective. This text’s strong emphasis on knowing Christ, being seized by him, feeling the power of the resurrection so as to enter into his Passion, is especially meaningful to those who are suffering in any way.
Moving gently from this highly personal life with Jesus, I open the door to the Lord’s greatest revelation: living always a Trinitarian life. Here, John’s last supper discourse is very effective. Of course, not everything follows completely this trajectory. The spirit moves where he wills.
Fr. Dan: Give God more room in the thinking, feeling and doing of your life. Pray that you may come to know and trust God, our Father. Jesus reveals the Father by his life, death and resurrection.
Quiet yourself to listen for God’s signals in your life. Make peace with your flawed humanity and so turn to God for insight and strength.
Forgive yourself and others as God forgives you. Be grateful — for who you are to God, for this present time of life, for hope in fullness of life with God in the future. Persevere. Stay the course. God is with you.
Fr. William: Often I will suggest a Scripture passage. So many times people want a quick solution. When I invite them to stay the course with God through prayer, I suggest that the greater part of prayer is listening. God already knows what we need. We need to give God the opportunity to respond to our situation by listening to him. Prayer is a dialogue, not a monologue.
When a person lacks control over a situation through no personal fault, I suggest reflecting on how Jesus experienced something similar on the cross, and looking at his reaction.
Sometimes people really beat themselves up, even after they have confessed certain deeds. In those situations, I invite them to ask for the grace to forgive themselves, to accept God’s forgiveness and to also learn what led them to that particular deed.
Q: In your many years of priestly ministry, how have you seen the grace of God at work in the people you have served, and what have you learned?
Fr. Tim: I have seen heroic virtue in so many of the people whom I have listened to and learned from. What a humbling and healing experience it is to witness the tenacious faith of those hit hard over and over again by sickness, death of loved ones, betrayal (especially of a spouse), injustice (especially from the church), unemployment, unrelenting darkness in prayer, loss of faith by loved ones. The list is long.
But people’s faith response to horrific life experiences is more than exemplary. It is a constant reminder that all vocations are a call to the cross. People who come to the monastery live their faith. They keep alive the memory of the Passion. They teach me.
Fr. Dan: Many people have only a hint of how much they are loved by God as revealed in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, and of God’s desire to be intimately involved in their lives.
People are fundamentally good and desire to be “right” with God and with other people.
People have generous hearts, “survivors” in the presence of hardships, and by-and-large, trust God.
Fr. William: Sometimes people have been away from the sacrament of reconciliation for nearly fifty years and something they hear on retreat touches them and they return to God.
I have seen people healed physically and witnessed people being reconciled with one another in spite of some difficult situations. Marriages and friendships have been restored.
I have seen people endure tremendous suffering physically, emotionally and spiritually. And yet they take it in stride without any bitterness or anger toward God.
I am always amazed and humbled at how the Spirit moves in people’s lives. The people really teach me about God as I witness God’s movement in their lives.
Fr. John: I have learned never to give up on anyone either in confession or in 12-step spirituality. I have come to know AA and NA victims.
It’s something rare to hear their whole life story with its traumatic (or even prosaic) events that have led them to their addiction. I have been amazed at the working of God’s grace in those with addictions lasting for decades.
Without their lived conversion and sincerity before me, I would have said as many of their friends did, “You’re hopeless.” But then comes the bottom in their story which opens them up to God’s grace and recovery.
Difficult as it may be to apply, never give up hope though tough love may have to intervene.
Q: How does your life-long commitment to preach the Passion of Jesus nourish your ministry of spiritual counsel?
Fr. William: Preaching and meditating on the Passion keeps reminding me not to give up on situations, and encourage others to do the same. In Jesus’ darkest hour on the cross, no one could have imagined that God would be able to pull goodness out of that situation.
The Passion also shows me how we are called to surrender our lives to God, not just in the big moments but also in the everyday moments.
Fr. John: I know where the graces come from, nourishing my faith and understanding of the mystery of the cross, — telling me that every grace in my own life and the instrumental grace I am for others was merited by a personal, loving Jesus on the cross — suffering, dying and rising so that I might take my place in the resurrection.
In the Passion of Jesus I have a constant sign for my faith which says “This is how much I love you. This is how much I really care.” This faith gives me courage in the darkness and helps me to be a Christian optimist despite my limitations and failures.
Fr. Dan: What I preach is the fruit of prayer, my ongoing education, life experiences and reflection. What I preach is what I try to live, and that influences my spiritual counsel.
Fr. Tim: As a Passionist I have that special vow to promote devotion to the Passion and to keep its memory alive in my own heart and in the hearts of others.
When I was first professed the wording of the vow formula stressed promoting devotion to the passion. This was not just a devotion, but the primary devotion, a willed (votum) act to enter the Lord’s will, to put on the mind of Christ who emptied himself for us.
In the 1970s and in our new Rule, the emphasis became caught up in the powerful scriptural and theological reflection on the memory of the Passion, a “dangerous memory,” to be kept alive.
Both emphases insist on a preaching (praying, acting, listening, counseling) that enlivens all Passionist ministries.
Spiritual direction or counsel, a treasured legacy from St. Paul of the Cross, pervades every aspect of the graced communication between the wayfarers on the road to Jerusalem with Christ, under the guidance of the director, the Holy Spirit. Faithful companions listen to the voice of the Father, who tells them to “Listen to my Son.”
