SUFFERING

Something is happening at Lourdes. And God wants to give us the eyes to see it and the ground to receive it. What are all these crippled and handicapped people telling us? What is the witness of all these nurses and life-bearers? It seems God wants us to live a vulnerable life, a life dependent on other people, a life that is unafraid to cry.

The little ones here are unable to numb themselves. The numb do not notice. The sophisticated will not suffer. The comfortable need not complain. But Jesus teaches us, in effect, how to suffer graciously. He actually increases, it seems, our capacity for holding sadness and pain. This might be the central message of the eight Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-12).

What kind of God is this? Could it be a God who actually allows deformities, sickness, and handicaps so we can all be bound together in a sisterhood of need and a brotherhood of compassion? I do not know how else to understand it all and we surely see it acted out right here. That is the primary miracle of Lourdes.