"Surrogates" and the Meaning of Suffering (by Jesse Martin)

About a month ago I went to see the movie Surrogates set in the not so distant future where people live their lives in the comfort of their own homes through remote-controlled robots called surrogates. Because people are safe at all times, and damage done to a surrogate is not felt by its owner, it is a peaceful world free from fear, pain, and crime.

Now, the movie on the surface was mediocre at best, but the quality of the film is not what concerns me. To me, this movie was more than a sci-fi action film. It was a movie that had a deeper underlying meaning than it seems. The entire time I was watching the movie I kept thinking about human suffering. How do we, as humans, approach suffering? How can we come to terms with it? And how are we to respond when confronted with it? We all know that suffering goes deeper than mere physical pain. We all know and have felt the suffering of our human heart that is so deeply rooted in human experience.

In the movie, humans have attempted to aggressively eradicate suffering which in theory would seem to be a great goal. A world with no suffering seems to be a world that everyone would want to live in. But what struck me about this fictional world was that not only was suffering taken away but so was love. “(Love) bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things” (1 Corinthians 13:7). When suffering is taken out of the human experience of love, we are left with a missed opportunity to love and to love greatly. If we are not willing to bear all things, hope all things, and endure all things, then we are not willing to love.

The heights of human love can reach beyond our wildest expectations, but in reality love also hurts! And we know this as human beings in the very depths of our hearts through our experiences and encounters with each other. Any married couple that says their marriage has been one of constant joy and euphoria is either lying or was married last night. Human love and life are intertwined with “agony and ecstasy.” The joys and ecstasy of human love should be emphasized so that we may have hope to endure those sufferings, but it is paradoxical in that the joys of love are precisely the fruit of enduring suffering! Think of an elderly married couple sitting together on a park bench, holding hands and reminiscing of the experiences of their life that they have endured with love: the birth or perhaps even the death of a child, financial gains and lost jobs, the smiles and arguments of everyday life. Is it not those agonies that made their love even stronger? And is it not those joys of life that gave them hope to be where they are now, sitting on that park bench loving each other more than they did the day before. How about an elderly priest or nun looking back on their lives having experienced the agonies and joys of their vocation? Are they not more in love with their God having experienced the demands of love in their vocation? I would say probably so.

As we approach the Christmas season and in solemnity prepare our hearts to remember the birth of Christ, talking or thinking about suffering is probably the last thing that we want to be doing. Indeed, Christmas should be a time of happiness, family, reunion, prayer, forgiveness, charity, and reflection. But when you think of the Nativity scene what do you think of? We all would probably say that we think of the infant Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes in a manger filled with hay with Mary and Joseph staring lovingly into the eyes of their tiny creator. In would walk the sheep and the goats and the three wise men to pay homage to their king, the Son of David. But what if we look at that scene through a new lens, the lens of realism and suffering? What would we see now? We would see Mary and Joseph enduring an arduous journey to Bethlehem. We see Mary crying in labor pains as Joseph desperately tries to find his young wife shelter. We see a newborn child crying and covered in blood while having just left the sacred womb of Our Mother. We see the infant in a manger crying still because the prickly hay is poking His tender skin. That realistic view of the birth of our Savior is definitely not what we imagine nor would we want to. So there probably won’t be a line of realistic nativity scenes being made anytime soon nor perhaps should there be. The suffering in the modern Nativity scene that we most think of has been taken out and we are left with this pristine image. But what exactly makes that first image of the Nativity so beautiful? After the blood has been wiped away, the labor pains have subsided, the stench of the stable has diffused, and the delicate cries of the infant Christ have come to an end, we see the most quintessential image of hope that has ever been created, Christ the embodiment of hope and love. Mary and Joseph, having endured those sufferings together in love make that Nativity image so moving.

Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta said something once that sheds light on this issue of suffering. She said, “I have found the paradox, that if you love until it hurts, there can be no more hurt, only more love.” As I was reflecting on these words from a great woman of wisdom and love, an image came to me. I was trying to put myself in her mind and share in her experiences in the slums of Calcutta so I could understand exactly what she meant. What was she experiencing when she was staring into the eyes of a crippled, starving orphan dying in her arms? The image that came to me was that of Christ, crucified on the cross. If what Mother said is true, than it should apply to the Christ on the cross, the embodiment of suffering done in love. Christ indeed loved, and loved until it hurt, but the suffering He endured for our sake was so soaked in perfect love and drenched in compassion, that the very thought of not dying for us, His bride, the Church, was more than even He could have withstood. For Him, the suffering of not dying for us was greater than enduring the cross. In Christ’s agony in the garden, because of His great love, He felt compelled to overcome His human fear and embrace the cross. Pope John Paul II writes in his encyclical, Salvifici Doloris (On the Meaning of Suffering), that “the need of the heart commands us to overcome fear.” We must overcome our fear just as Christ did in the garden. “I give you a new commandment: love one another as I have loved you.” (John 13:34) How did Christ love us? He carried his cross, in love, for us. Loving in this way is the only way we, as humans, can be fulfilled, by making a sincere gift of ourselves, and in doing so we may suffer. “Man is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, [and he] cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.” (Gaudium et Spes 24) But, Christ’s love is so perfect and so real that He actually must have preferred the suffering of the cross than the suffering of not enduring the passion, because He loves us with such intensity and ferocity that His heart was compelled to overcome fear. And there is great hope in that! Through the cross, fulfilled in the Resurrection, our sufferings are not meaningless as they can sometimes feel to be, because Christ is Risen! And that is what gives us our hope! “And if Christ has not been raised, then empty (too) is our preaching; empty, too, your faith.” (1 Corinthians 15:14)

Paul’s letter to the Colossians gives us some insight on Christian suffering as well. “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church.” (Colossians 1:24) Paul is actually telling us that we should rejoice in our sufferings! And here we come to the great Catholic saying of “offer it up.” Here we have hope that our sufferings again are not meaningless and can be united with Christ on the Cross through the mystery of us, the Church, being the body of Christ. The redemption achieved by Christ is complete, but it remains open to all human suffering expressed in love. This is our great hope that we share! We must be weary of any attempt in our lives to sever love from suffering. Not because we are masochists, but because we believe in healing, compassion, redemption, life, hope, and the love we thirst for! As St. Augustine said, “The word God means all that we yearn for.”

So as we head into the Christmas season, we must ask ourselves, are we willing to love and love until it hurts? If we believe the Christian message on redemptive suffering and know the logic and theology behind it, but the message does not really change our hearts, what good is that knowledge? Are we willing to prefer the sufferings that come with love over the emptiness of living for ourselves? We must give all of ourselves in everything we do and to everyone in our lives and not hold back anything back because of fear. We cannot be fulfilled any other way. We were made to be a gift to each other. Let it be! Amen!

“I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, "Behold, God's dwelling is with the human race. He will dwell with them and they will be his people and God himself will always be with them as their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, for the old order has passed away." (Revelation 21:3-4)

Jesse Martin

(Jesse Martin is a nursing student at Southeastern Louisiana University and a 2009 CoC alumnus)