Thoughts on Suffering by Caryll Houselander

Caryll Houselander, mystic and suffering servant, died at age 51 in England in 1953--but not before she left tremendous writings, including her autobiography Rocking Horse Catholic and the classic, Reed of God.

In the chapter on "Advent", Caryll touches upon suffering. She dwelt in the Lord's "house of suffering" much of her life, in one way or another, so her thoughts on the topic are rather inspired.

"People sometimes get disheartened because they have read that suffering ennobles and have met people who seem to have come out of the crucible like pure silver, made beautiful by suffering; but it seems to them that in their own case it is quite the opposite. They find that, however hard they try not to be, they are irritable; that astonishing stabs of bitterness afflict them, that far from being more sympathetic, more understanding, there is a numbness, a chill on their emotions: they cannot respond to others at all; they seem not to love anyone any more; and they even shrink from, and dread the very presence of, those who are compassionate and who care for them.

"They say that in their case suffering is certainly a failure.

"The truth is that they are too impatient to wait for the season of Advent in sorrow to run its course; a seed contains all the life and loveliness of the flower, but it contains it in a little hard black pip of a thing which even the glorious sun will not enliven unless it is buried under the earth.

"There must be a period of gestation before anything can flower.

"If only those who suffer would be patient with their early humiliations and realize that Advent is not only the time of growth but also of darkness and hiding and waiting, they would trust, and trust rightly, that Christ is growing in their sorrow, and in due season all the fret and strain and tension of it will give place to a splendor of peace.

Is this not beauty and truth? I marvel at the images, at the hiddenness of suffering. Caryll next writes of joy, and of the same time that must be allowed for joy to bloom. We often hear the mystics and victim souls write and speak of suffering becoming joy--of loving to suffer and suffering to love, of joy and pain being on the same plane, interchangeable in a spiritual conundrum.

This is true, but it takes time--the time necessary for each individual soul to relinquish fear in pain and embrace trust in pain. This is usually done in darkness, in silence, in the final death of self-will. And, as in the seasons of seed-planting, gestation, growth and harvest, these deaths of self-will are cyclical and deepening, as a spiral boring into the heart of Love.