Is Suffering the Kiss of Jesus? Examining the Suffering Body, Death, and the Resurrection
Kimbell Kornu, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Medicine and Health Care Ethics, St. Louis University; Ryan Nash, MD, FACP, FAAHPM, Hagop Mekhjian, MD, Chair in Medical Ethics and Professionalism; and Director, The Ohio State University Center for Bioethics; Matthew Vest, PhD, Assistant Director of Education Programs & Instructor in the Division of Bioethics, Ohio State University; and Mark Wells, MD, MA, Pediatric Resident, Nationwide Children's Hospital/Ohio State University
This panel focuses on a central question: is suffering redemptive? Further, if it is redemptive, in what way? Is this redemption inherent such that we are united to Christ, in union with His Passion when we “carry his cross” (Matt. 27:32)? Is this redemption through suffering qualified such that bodily pain may bring us closer to Jesus when suffering is received as a “gift” or is offered up as a “good intention”? Alternately, some may note that suffering is only redemptive in light of our created and fallen temporal existence. Pain and suffering exist here and now but not in the eschaton. Even as “we worship Thy passion, O Christ,” we pray this within the deeper reality and expectation: “show us Thy glorious resurrection.”
With these questions as a starting point, this panel will examine suffering—and in particular, bodily pain—first by testing our modern understanding of important categories such as body, soul, suffering, and death. Modern, secular medicine, for instance, views the body primarily in its gross material elements. In this way physicians see flesh, bones, nerves, and blood as the essence of the body whereas Christians believe in a different constitution of the body as a fundamentally spiritual organism, a soma pneumatikon. As such, the body is ensouled, and the soul is immortal. Furthermore, these categories lead us to consider pain, suffering, and death in at least two modes: there is physical suffering and death and spiritual or metaphysical suffering and death. The implications of these categories or modes of understanding are many, but it is critical and pedagogical to note how these modes within the Christian tradition fundamentally subvert the logic of secular modernity. Philip Sherrard articulates the Christian view of the body that surely challenges modern, secular medicine: ...the spiritual body possesses in a spiritual form the whole range of senses of which what we call our corporeal senses are, as it were, the reflexes or the prolongations. The life of the eye is not of the material body, but of the spirit. And so it is with all our other senses: their grounds or roots are not corporeal but spiritual (“On Death and Dying”).
As a second point of reference, we will consider the tensions and nuances for how these modes are understood within the Christian tradition. Death, for instance, is not a concrete end to the body or “this life” but rather is an experience and reality to be known within this life. This may sound odd given that death is typically seen as the end of life, but Christians are called to the discipline and ascesis of realizing death as a fully comprehensive art of living. Christ is the “light” and “life” of the world (John 8:12) Who tramples down death by death, and in this way the categories of life and death are not polarized but interwoven modes of the same reality. Paradoxically, the Christian who knows death in this life becomes prepared for life after death, knowing that life as immortality in some way awaits all humans. In a similar way, pain and suffering may be known less as concrete distinctions apart from health and “well-being.” If and when pain and suffering are accepted as normative and vital constituents of or within our earthly existence, a form of earthly life-with-suffering emerges that is profoundly connected to blessedness in the next life. As the lines of death and life are interwoven, so may the lines between suffering and peace intermingle.
Lastly, this panel will draw from notable figures within the Christian tradition who knew pain intimately and came to articulate its place and role with differences that are illumining. Mother Teresa, for instance, knew suffering intimately and held it as a “gift” that draws one closer to God. Suffering spoke of a “mysterious link” between human suffering as a “darkness” we experience and that of the Lord’s experience; indeed, she held that her painful longing participates in the thirst of Jesus. “For the first time in this 11 years – I have come to love the darkness. For I believe now that it is a part, a very, very small part of Jesus’ darkness and pain on earth.” For Mother Teresa, suffering is highly redemptive, nothing less than “the kiss of Jesus.”
Fr. Nikos of New Skete (Mt. Athos), however, provocatively decries Mother Teresa’s approach that “accepts suffering as a good thing.” Pointing to the Resurrection, Fr. Nikos reminds us that Easter is the triumph over the Crucifixion, and hence no suffering or disease can be good things. Moreover, the Resurrection so overwhelms the Cross that our faith cannot “praise and justify suffering” lest we “accept suffering” in way that contradicts Christ healing lepers (Mark 1:40-45; Luke 17:11-19), the paralytic (Matt. 9:1-8), the bleeding woman (Mark 5:21-43), those disfigured, blind, and more. To accept suffering inherently leaves us forever on Friday of the Cross rather than entering fully into Resurrection Sunday, and hence Fr. Nikos even denounces “a Western saint” [e.g. Mother Teresa] as espousing a “cult of suffering” for claiming “sorrow, suffering are but the kiss of Jesus.”
Again, is suffering redemptive? How so? Does Mother Teresa espouse a view of suffering as inherently redemptive? Is the practice of “victim souls”—those who specially participate in Christ’s Passion, manifesting His sufferings in their bodies for the sake of the Church—consistent within traditional Christianity? Is Fr. Nikos prescient or presumptive for pointing so adamantly to the resurrectional end of suffering? What does it mean for St. Isaac the Syrian to speak of suffering sorrows as “daily necessity” because “virtues are interwoven with sorrows” (Homily 57)? Moreover, the person who desires virtue must surrender to “every kind of suffering,” be it spiritual suffering from evil in the world, affliction and harm from others, or bodily pains and illness.
This panel brings together four individuals well acquainted with these questions from both a clinical- medical (two panelists are palliative care physicians; the moderator is a pediatrics intern with an MA in Bioethics) and theological/philosophical perspectives (two panelists have doctorates in philosophical theology). All four have backgrounds and/or represent multiple Christian denominations, traditions, and practices. This panel would be attractive to healthcare practitioners, chaplains, theologians, academics, and others interested in ways of understanding suffering within the Christian tradition.
With these questions as a starting point, this panel will examine suffering—and in particular, bodily pain—first by testing our modern understanding of important categories such as body, soul, suffering, and death. Modern, secular medicine, for instance, views the body primarily in its gross material elements. In this way physicians see flesh, bones, nerves, and blood as the essence of the body whereas Christians believe in a different constitution of the body as a fundamentally spiritual organism, a soma pneumatikon. As such, the body is ensouled, and the soul is immortal. Furthermore, these categories lead us to consider pain, suffering, and death in at least two modes: there is physical suffering and death and spiritual or metaphysical suffering and death. The implications of these categories or modes of understanding are many, but it is critical and pedagogical to note how these modes within the Christian tradition fundamentally subvert the logic of secular modernity. Philip Sherrard articulates the Christian view of the body that surely challenges modern, secular medicine: ...the spiritual body possesses in a spiritual form the whole range of senses of which what we call our corporeal senses are, as it were, the reflexes or the prolongations. The life of the eye is not of the material body, but of the spirit. And so it is with all our other senses: their grounds or roots are not corporeal but spiritual (“On Death and Dying”).
As a second point of reference, we will consider the tensions and nuances for how these modes are understood within the Christian tradition. Death, for instance, is not a concrete end to the body or “this life” but rather is an experience and reality to be known within this life. This may sound odd given that death is typically seen as the end of life, but Christians are called to the discipline and ascesis of realizing death as a fully comprehensive art of living. Christ is the “light” and “life” of the world (John 8:12) Who tramples down death by death, and in this way the categories of life and death are not polarized but interwoven modes of the same reality. Paradoxically, the Christian who knows death in this life becomes prepared for life after death, knowing that life as immortality in some way awaits all humans. In a similar way, pain and suffering may be known less as concrete distinctions apart from health and “well-being.” If and when pain and suffering are accepted as normative and vital constituents of or within our earthly existence, a form of earthly life-with-suffering emerges that is profoundly connected to blessedness in the next life. As the lines of death and life are interwoven, so may the lines between suffering and peace intermingle.
Lastly, this panel will draw from notable figures within the Christian tradition who knew pain intimately and came to articulate its place and role with differences that are illumining. Mother Teresa, for instance, knew suffering intimately and held it as a “gift” that draws one closer to God. Suffering spoke of a “mysterious link” between human suffering as a “darkness” we experience and that of the Lord’s experience; indeed, she held that her painful longing participates in the thirst of Jesus. “For the first time in this 11 years – I have come to love the darkness. For I believe now that it is a part, a very, very small part of Jesus’ darkness and pain on earth.” For Mother Teresa, suffering is highly redemptive, nothing less than “the kiss of Jesus.”
Fr. Nikos of New Skete (Mt. Athos), however, provocatively decries Mother Teresa’s approach that “accepts suffering as a good thing.” Pointing to the Resurrection, Fr. Nikos reminds us that Easter is the triumph over the Crucifixion, and hence no suffering or disease can be good things. Moreover, the Resurrection so overwhelms the Cross that our faith cannot “praise and justify suffering” lest we “accept suffering” in way that contradicts Christ healing lepers (Mark 1:40-45; Luke 17:11-19), the paralytic (Matt. 9:1-8), the bleeding woman (Mark 5:21-43), those disfigured, blind, and more. To accept suffering inherently leaves us forever on Friday of the Cross rather than entering fully into Resurrection Sunday, and hence Fr. Nikos even denounces “a Western saint” [e.g. Mother Teresa] as espousing a “cult of suffering” for claiming “sorrow, suffering are but the kiss of Jesus.”
Again, is suffering redemptive? How so? Does Mother Teresa espouse a view of suffering as inherently redemptive? Is the practice of “victim souls”—those who specially participate in Christ’s Passion, manifesting His sufferings in their bodies for the sake of the Church—consistent within traditional Christianity? Is Fr. Nikos prescient or presumptive for pointing so adamantly to the resurrectional end of suffering? What does it mean for St. Isaac the Syrian to speak of suffering sorrows as “daily necessity” because “virtues are interwoven with sorrows” (Homily 57)? Moreover, the person who desires virtue must surrender to “every kind of suffering,” be it spiritual suffering from evil in the world, affliction and harm from others, or bodily pains and illness.
This panel brings together four individuals well acquainted with these questions from both a clinical- medical (two panelists are palliative care physicians; the moderator is a pediatrics intern with an MA in Bioethics) and theological/philosophical perspectives (two panelists have doctorates in philosophical theology). All four have backgrounds and/or represent multiple Christian denominations, traditions, and practices. This panel would be attractive to healthcare practitioners, chaplains, theologians, academics, and others interested in ways of understanding suffering within the Christian tradition.