"AFTER GREAT PAIN"

Madonna and Child
Vincenzo Foppa, 1480

"In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness.  We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans." Romans 8:26

This text was a recent Sunday's bible verse. 

Like some, I light candles before worship.  Some of the people I have intentions for, a simple prayer that they be well has not worked.  After many years, they are not well.  The Spirit needs to determine what is the best prayer.  A pray for healing can be unrealistic. But there are other prayers, like "Help, save, comfort and defend us Gracious Lord." There are many.

When someone young was dying, a close Catholic friend said to him, "When I come back next week tell me what you want second."  Perhaps we should all think about that.  

Some people pray for surcease from pain.  I do that only in moments when pain is acute, which does not happen too often.  Many people's daily physical pain is more than mine, many less.  As we grow older, some degree of chronic pain is common.  It makes me think of Emily Dickinson's poem:  

"After great pain, a formal feeling comes - / The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs -" 

Many of us have had pain that hijacks our attention. When it passes the nerves are on edge, waiting. Is it over?  We treat our bodies tenderly.  Our nerves have been traumatized; like a baby, they need to be comforted.  We tiptoe.    

Mental and emotional suffering is another kind of pain.  It can arise when someone we love hurts:  our child, our spouse, our parent . . . would we even notice a bad back or hip or knee as we sat at the bedside of a loved one?   Or it can arise when we ourselves hurt from loss or betrayal, grief, trauma or the imminence of death.   

Some readers think Dickinson was writing about suffering, in other words, emotional pain.  In the law, with which I am familiar, physical hurt is called pain, emotional hurt, suffering.  If our leg is gone, we may have no physical pain at all.  But we may still suffer.  In her poem, Dickinson wonders whether Christ's pain was like ours or whether ours is like His.  

"The stiff Heart questions, 'was it He, that bore,' / And 'Yesterday, or centuries before'?"

She continues, " A Quartz contentment, like a stone / This is the Hour of Lead - " 

Some commentators think that the whole poem is about emotional or psychic pain.  But it is not.  It is about when pain ceases. " First chill - then Stupor - then the letting go."   There is a great surcease when we return to equilibrium.  The "letting go" is tangible.  We breathe easier.  Our muscles relax.  Our brows unforrow. 

The death of someone may be a surcease of pain.  It may bring relief, to them and to us.  We are grateful for their life; we are grateful for their death.  Haven't you experienced that?  The Spirit helps us pray when someone dies; when mental illness drives the cart; when a disc slips or a brain bleeds or a heart stops.   

The Book of Romans tells us that the Spirit intercedes through wordless groans.  My own groans may be no more than, "Oh please."  We want the pain or the suffering to stop.  Let us believe the promise that it always will.  AMEN