Richard Rohr

Pain teaches a most counterintuitive thing that we must go down before we even know what up is. It is first an ordinary wound before it can become a sacred wound. Suffering of some sort seems to be the only thing strong enough to destabilize our arrogance and our ignorance. I would define suffering very simply as whenever we are not in control.

All healthy religion shows us what to do with our pain. If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it. If our religion is not showing us how to transform our pain, it is junk religion. It is no surprise that a crucified man became the central symbol of Christianity.

If we cannot find a way to make our wounds into sacred wounds, we invariably become negative or bitter because we will be wounded. That is a given. All suffering is potentially redemptive, all wounds are potentially sacred wounds. It depends on what we do with them. Can we find God in them or not?

If there isn’t some way to find some deeper meaning to our suffering, to find that God is somehow in it and can even use it for good, we will normally close up and close down, and the second half of our lives will, quite frankly, be small and silly.

+Adapted from Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality, p. 25.