How to Hold Suffering and Joy
(Above image: Smiling Francis, by Mic Carlson available on his website.)
I find that suffering and joy are not mutually exclusive. They often come bundled together in the same week, month or year. Sometimes even in the same day. The trick is how to hold both well. How do we acknowledge suffering without letting it define us or dominate our spirit? And how do we hold joy in a way that does not dismiss our suffering or sweep it under the rug?
When I think of someone who could hold suffering and joy together, I think of Francis of Assisi.
St. Francis of Assisi
Fashion has always been a symbol of status, and Italian men have been some of the best-known fashionistas. But before there was Versace, or Armani or Gucci, there was Bernadone.
Francesco Bernadone was born into the home of a wealthy cloth merchant, and in the early 1200s he was the king of fashion in his little Italian village of Assisi. Friends flocked to Francis. Not only was he a great dresser, but Francis was a party animal, and he was generous with his father’s wealth.
Francis was a young man with privilege, and he took great pleasure in the extravagance of his outfits, the outlandish parties he hosted and the escapades with women that marked his youth. But even with all the pleasures that wealth and privilege afforded him, Francis longed for more. He dreamed of obtaining the grandeur of knighthood.
His first shot at glory in battle came in 1202 when the merchants of Assisi went to war with the nobility of the nearby town of Perugia. Hopped up on adrenaline and rushing to meet the enemy, the young men of Assisi were soundly defeated by the nobles of Perugia. Bodies were strewn about the battlefield, but Francis, dressed in all his finery, was singled out as a rich kid and taken captive in hopes of getting a ransom. After languishing for six months in a dank, underground prison, Francis’ family finally received word that he was alive. It took another six months to negotiate his release.
The Suffering of Francis
The retched conditions in captivity introduced this young man of privilege to forms of suffering he’d never imagined. He contracted malaria and dysentery while held hostage and these diseases would plague him for the rest of his life. But the most agonizing illness that Francis suffered in his capture and imprisonment was crippling depression.
At 22 he returned to Assisi a shadow of the man that went into battle a year earlier. It was like the joy of partying and carousing had been swallowed up in the suffering he endured in prison. Then, in 1205, a nobleman passed through Assisi on his way to join the 4th Crusade. Francis boasted that this was the chance at knighthood he had been waiting for. Francis outfitted himself in the latest Crusader fashion, and the finest horse money could buy. The night before he left, Francis dreamed that a man led him into a palace filled with brilliant armor, shields and spears. The next day his family and friends asked about his obvious joy. “I know that I will become a great prince!” He told them.
A short distance outside of Assisi, Francis was overcome with malarial fever and extreme nausea. In his delirium, Francis heard a voice asking where he was going. He said that he intended to become a knight in the crusade. “Why are you abandoning the master for the servant?” The voice said. “Go back to Assisi.”
The shame of this defeat was even greater than being taken as a prisoner of war. Francis was racked with the internal suffering of failure, depression and unfulfilled desire, and the outward suffering of an illness for which there was no cure.
The Joy of Francis
But two profound encounters during this period radically changed him. The first was an encounter with a leper. Lepers were repulsive to Francis like they were to most of the medieval world. Their festering sores and rotting flesh made the sight and smell of lepers unbearable. But meeting a leper on the road one day Francis was overcome with a mystical love. He got down from his horse and embraced the leper, kissing him on the cheek. Later, Francis wrote “what had previously nauseated me became the source of spiritual and physical consolation.” Somehow, Francis experienced a holy joy, even while carrying his own suffering and witnessing the suffering of the leper.
The second encounter was with the broken-down chapel at the base of the hill on which Assisi was built. Francis was returning from an errand and sought rest inside the dilapidated church of San Damiano. Like the leper on the road, San Damiano was in a state of decay and neglect. As Francis sat before the cross that hung above the alter, the crucified Christ spoke to him in a voice he described as “tender and kind.”
“Francis,” Jesus said, “don’t you see that my house is being destroyed? Go then and rebuild it.”
In that exchange there was a sense of purpose in Francis. A calling. His quest for knighthood was being reframed by the suffering of the leper and the deterioration of the Church. Francis was discovering a new kind of joy. Not a joy based on fine clothes or located in the privileges of wealth. It was deeper than that. It was a joy that could encounter suffering without being overcome by it.
Psalm 16:11 says, “In your presence there is fullness of joy.” Francis had experienced the presence of Jesus in the leper, along with the joy which accompanied finding Christ in the disguise of the marginalized. And, for the first years of his ministry, he took the words of the crucified Christ in San Damiano quite literally. He spent his time and his father’s wealth rebuilding broken down chapels.
Desolation and Consolation
In the desolations of life we can often find the consoling presence of Christ. A woman who lost her husband to cancer told a group of us that in the deepest part of her grief there was a strange nearness to Jesus that she had never experienced in the peaceful times. I’ve also found in my disappointments that bringing to mind a sense of purpose grows my capacity to hold unfulfilled desires. Getting in touch with the presence of Jesus and a sense of purpose stretch my capacity to contain the inevitable sufferings that come my way.
I have 4 unpublished speculative fiction novels that I can’t get an agent or publishing house to take on even after 100 submissions. Yet, I can feel a sense of purpose in writing, a calling if you will, even when it is rejected. I am able to hold the unfulfilled desire of being published alongside the joy of writing. I can endure the heartbreak which comes with seeing the deep poverty of people I’ve walked alongside in the slum communities of the developing world as I recognize the presence of Jesus in their bodies and their shanties and in their resilience.
Suffering and joy can be held at the same time without using joy to blind me from suffering nor allowing suffering to obliterate the experiences of joy. Learn to live with both. It’s a skill that will come in handy.