My husband came home this past Sunday from taking Holy Communion to our long-time friend—homebound as he recovers from drastic cancer treatments. We have been taking turns ministering to this friend for the past year. It turns out, the cancer is back and has spread to a new organ. His body already ravaged, he must now now fight on a new front.
During the same week, every close friend we have in the area dealt with a major emergency with a parent or child. Text after text rolled in asking for prayers. All at once, a deluge of suffering was unleashed on everyone around us. It all happened on the same day. Thankfully, all those emergencies responded to medical treatment, and they are on the mend except for our friend who found out that the cancer is back.
When my husband told me the news, I had no words. In fact, ever since then all I feel is the aching silence of Our Blessed Mother, St. John, and St. Mary Magdalene at the foot of the Cross. What is there to say to a friend who has suffered such intense agonies and afflictions? What words could soften the hard, splintering wood of his cross and crucifixion? What answers can be given in the face of surviving so many close calls only to get word that the cancer is back and is more aggressive?
There is a moment in the face of terrible sufferings when silence is the only appropriate response. There is no more “reasoning away” what is happening; no more words of consolation. Silence is the only response to cold, piercing nails, slow asphyxiation, and darkness. It is the only response when staring into the eyes of a friend who has been given a possible death sentence.
Our Blessed Mother is silent at the foot of the Cross. St. John and St. Mary Magdalene do not utter a single word either. It is the Lord who speaks to them in His agony. The God-man who empties Himself entirely enters into the suffering of His mother and beloved disciples. He turns to His Mother and gives her spiritual children. He gives her a priest-son and, through that action, gives her the entire Church as her spiritual children. From the Cross, He asks her to love those He loves and to care for their spiritual needs through her guidance of the nascent Church and through her intercession as Queen of Heaven.
In John 19:25-27 we hear Jesus speak tenderly to Our Heavenly Mother and St. John:
Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple there whom he loved, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his home.
Neither of them verbally responds to this new mission entrusted to them from the Lord. They allow Him to do all the talking while they silently endure the agony of the Cross. He speaks into their silence.
This is a lesson for each one of us when we are faced with the mystery of suffering in our own lives or in the lives of our loved ones. There is a silence we must be willing to endure in order to enter into the mystery of suffering.
Suffering is a mystery. We do not understand it. We are not given answers to the questions of why some people suffer and die in certain ways or at an early age. We don’t know why some people suffer unspeakable agonies and never live to experience victory over their affliction in this life. Their ultimate victory can only be lived in heaven.
Our willingness to enter the silence of this mystery leads us to deeper union with Christ. In our silence, He can speak to us. He is able to reach us in the poverty of silence in ways He cannot when we do all of the talking. The empty words we use to cover our discomfort or unwillingness to endure suffering can never lead us to deeper spiritual growth. Those words crowd out the dialogue the Lord wants to have with us in these agonies. Our desire for control in moments of affliction keeps us at a distance from the Lord. Only silence can draw us close to Him. There are moments when He wants to lead us into the silent agony of the Cross. Moments when “He wants to kiss us from the Cross,” as Mother Teresa reminds us.
Cardinal Sarah has written and spoken extensively about the need for silence. God primarily speaks to us through silence—whether it is the silence of the Cross or the silence of the consecrated host Who waits patiently for us. His love is shown to us through a deep and tender silence that is filled with His presence. This is especially true in suffering. Cardinal Sarah explains:
God does not will evil. Nevertheless, He remains astonishingly silent in the face of our trials. In spite of everything, suffering does not call God’s almighty power into question—far from it; rather, it reveals it to us. I still hear the voice of the child who through his tears asked me, “Why did God not keep my father from being killed?” In His mysterious silence, God manifests Himself in the tear shed by the child and not in the order of the world that would justify that tear. God has His mysterious way of being close to us in our trials. He is intensely present in our trials and sufferings. His strength makes itself silence because it reveals his infinite tact, His loving tenderness for those who suffer. External manifestations are not necessarily the best proofs of closeness. Silence reveals God’s compassion, the fact that He takes part in our sufferings. God does not will evil. And the more monstrous the evil, the clearer it becomes that God in us is the first victim.
Christ’s victory over death and sin is consummated in the grand silence of the cross. God manifests all His power in this silence that no barbarity will ever be able to sully.
Silence allows us to experience God’s love and compassion towards us in our suffering. All the words in the world can never answer the depths of our agonies when confronted with a terminal diagnosis, the horror of a terrorist attack, or holding a loved one’s hand as they die. It is only by allowing ourselves to be taken up into the silence of our agony that Christ can speak to us. It is only when we stand on the shore of the mystery that is suffering and fall silent that God can console us.
The reason we fail to minister to others in their trials and afflictions is because we wrongly believe that we need to have answers. We think that words will fix it. That our keeping busy for the person or filling the air with empty words are necessary. When we can’t endure the silence of it all, we flee.
Instead, we must allow the silence to engulf us. We must allow silence to engulf the person who is suffering. It is not an empty silence. It is a silence filled with Holy Presence. It is a silence filled with the great mystery of the Cross, which says to us that death will not have the last say. The silence of the Cross paves the way to the Resurrection. We must stand in silence with Our Lady of Sorrows, St. John, and St. Mary Magdalene because it is the Lord who speaks in the silence of our afflictions.
Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash
