In a letter to a friend in June 1958, Flannery O’Connor briefly discussed an acquaintance who had committed suicide. O’Connor’s mother (a frequent foil for O’Connor’s wit and wisdom) had said that “she didn’t see how anybody with any faith in God could do such a thing”. O’Connor’s judgement of the person was more charitable and circumspect. It was also very profound. “His tragedy,” she noted, was “that he didn’t know what to do with his suffering.”
In a sentence, O’Connor summarises the predicament of a modern world that has neglected – or rejected – the Catholic Christian purpose and end of suffering. Lent is the annual reminder of that purpose. Among other things, the season of Lent tells us what to do with our suffering. Perhaps more importantly, Lent calls us to be attentive to the suffering of others, as we help one another to know what to do with our suffering.
Many of us approach Lent with the purpose of some form of self-denial or even mild self-mortification, as our grandparents might have called it. We give something up or commit to some discipline as a form of deprivation. This is, of course, a perfectly legitimate expression of Lenten devotion. We take on some form of suffering – some kind of enduring discomfort – for the purpose of participation with Christ in his 40 days in the desert.
But for many people, the suffering is already present; it does not have to be induced. For such individuals, the question is not: “What should one do to participate in suffering?” Rather, it is: “What shall I do with my suffering?” And this raises the further question: “What shall I do to assume the suffering of those around me?” Flannery O’Connor’s letters and prayers are a helpful guide.
O’Connor, of course, was not a stranger to physical suffering. In 1952, she was diagnosed with the lupus that would gradually cripple her before taking her life 12 years later at the age of 39. Despite sometimes debilitating inflammation and pain, she managed to produce some of the best fiction in the history of American letters. And she sustained a voluminous correspondence, much of which is collected in a volume called The Habit of Being.
Much as she experienced physical pain, O’Connor’s discussion of suffering is more often focused on spiritual, psychological and moral distress. Her occasional comments about the symptoms of her disease are matter-of-fact asides and parentheticals. Her thoughts about suffering, in contrast, are in the context of how to believe, pray and practise one’s faith in fidelity to the Gospel. O’Connor is rightly celebrated as one of America’s greatest Catholic writers. But her faith did not come easy, and she understood its cost.
“I think there is no suffering greater than what is caused by the doubts of those who want to believe,” she wrote in 1959. “I know what torment this is, but I can only see it…as the process by which faith is deepened,” she continued. “What people don’t realise is how much religion costs…[F]aith is the Cross. It is much harder to believe than not to believe.”
This echoes one of her most famous letters, written to a young college student about struggling with faith. “[T]his experience…of losing your faith…is an experience that in the long run belongs to faith,” she wrote. In other words, for O’Connor, to try to believe is to suffer. To try to believe more deeply is to suffer more. Perhaps it says more about me than I should want to reveal, but such observations resonate strongly for me. But I believe I am not alone.
The question, again, is what to do with such suffering. In Lent, we tend to concentrate on private discipline for the purpose of personal spiritual development. And to be sure, a sense of spiritual aloneness can be a vital aspect of Lenten observation. But Christ did not go to the desert for himself; he went for us. So even when our own Lenten observances have the laudable goal of personal spiritual growth, we mustn’t forget that we live to serve others. This includes suffering the suffering of others. As O’Connor put it in a 1961 letter: “You will have found Christ when you are concerned with other people’s suffering and not your own.”
But, of course, we understand that sharing Christ’s suffering in the desert is ordered towards sharing in the joy of his Resurrection. Suffering is a “shared experience with Christ”, O’Connor suggests in a 1963 letter. But, she says: “it should be true of every experience that is not sinful”, adding that perhaps “joy is the outgrowth of suffering in a special way”.
In his Epistle to the Romans, St Paul the Apostle declares: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed for us” (Rom 8:18). Perhaps we should take it not as an invitation to suffer ourselves, but rather as a summons to suffer the suffering of others. Then the joy of Christ may be in us, and our joy may be complete.
Photo: Flannery O’Connor, on crutches because of lupus, with her beloved peacocks.
This article first appeared in the March 2024 issue of the Catholic Herald. To subscribe to our multiple-award-winning magazine and have it delivered to your door anywhere in the world, go here.
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