In the Storm Cloud

You called in distress and I saved you.
I answered, concealed in the storm cloud

(Psalm 81:7, Grail Translation)

Human beings are born seekers. Over the centuries, countless men and women in monasteries and outside them have found a valuable direction for their search in the Benedictine mandate to “seek God in all things” (cf. Rule of St. Benedict, 58:7). The phrase occurs in a short list of criteria Benedict provides for judging the authenticity of a novice’s vocation. The last criterion on the list is the stumbling block for most of us: does this novice “show eagerness” for trials. The phrase is variously translated and interpreted, but it identifies the stumbling block which causes many of us to fall flat on our faces in our efforts to “seek God in all things”.

When the storm cloud of suffering settles round us that task becomes most difficult. How can we seek God when we have the pressing issue of pain on our minds? The chaos blinds and deafens us. We flounder, unable to find the path on which we walked with such confidence yesterday. We cry out for deliverance. At such times, we remember the story of Jesus stilling the storm, once the disciples succeeded in waking him up (Matthew 8:23-27). Perhaps if we pray louder, we can wake God up and get this storm taken care of so we can get on with the business of seeking God. What kind of protest, cajolery or bribe will stir Jesus out of his irritating sleep? What will it take to get him up and moving? Maybe if we promise to give up smoking or late-night TV…maybe if we promise to be kind to that irksome neighbor or to listen to that deadening bore…maybe if we promise to make nine novenas…maybe…Maybe we should stop looking for our own solutions and listen.

In a minute. Ok, if God is not going to still this storm, let’s ask for deliverance of a different kind. Meaninglessness is intolerable to the human spirit. To find something meaningless is either to find no explanation for it or to find no purpose for it.

The suffering would not be so bad if we could understand the reason for it. Often, in fact, the first form of deliverance we ask for is an explanation: “Why are you letting this happen? Why me? Why now?” What we really want is a compelling self-justification from the all-powerful but not, at the moment, all-merciful Providence. We are Job, crying out to God to come to his own defense at the bar of our notion of justice. However, if God is silent, we often scurry after a scapegoat. If she hadn’t given me that cold…if my superiors had understood that I was overworked…if the school staff had paid more attention to my child…if Al-Qaeda had left the World Trade Center alone so we wouldn’t be tempted to go to war…if it hadn’t been full moon. Casting the blame on someone or something else—even our silent God—does nothing to still the storm, but it does sometimes make it more bearable because it provides some sort of indirect rationale for the trouble. It also absolves us of any responsibility. That matters because our last recourse, if no other explanation is forthcoming, is to probe our own shortcomings. If I had lost weight…if I hadn’t gone out of town just then…if I had paid more attention…if I hadn’t irritated my boss…if I had voted for the other candidate…

If no explanation is forthcoming from any quarter, we may then turn to the task of finding a purpose for it all. Here the “comforts of religion” can be a poor excuse for evading God. Many of us were taught, when faced with pain, to “offer it up”—usually meaning that we should use it as intercessory prayer or gift for someone else’s need. That is an admirable ideal when, in fact, we have plumbed the pain to its depth. In the hands of saints, it is a powerful tool for good. However, when we are simply looking for a way out, it’s a cheap exit. It invites a kind of resignation that is often a thin veil for passive-aggressive resentment. Muttered behind our hands joined in prayer, are whispers of “Ok, God, look, I’m offering it up, aren’t you going to do something? At least console me for my piety? At least let me know that I’ve sprung someone from purgatory or made my son go back to the sacraments!” This is mere bargaining in disguise. Bargaining is a normal stage in the grief process, but it’s healthier if we call it what it is. The introduction to the Church’s rites for the sick and dying, Pastoral Care: The Rites of Anointing and Viaticum, urge the sick to unite their sufferings with Christ’s. That’s actually the theological point implicit in the notion of offering something up –we make our offering in communion with Christ’s self-offering on the cross. Here again, though, the goal is not to eliminate the suffering by baptizing it with religious language. Communion with Christ on the cross includes communion with the One who cried out in absolute darkness of soul, “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?” This is the food of highest holiness through truly redemptive suffering, but it’s not for the faint-hearted seeking an escape from the unbearable.

In the end, out of solutions of our own, perhaps we must indeed stop and listen. There is a point at which, brought to our knees, we must abandon the search for deliverance and, instead, seek God. Up until now, we have been seeking not God but something from God: escape, explanation, purpose. Those are all natural, normal, healthy responses to suffering. And, in fact, we are unlikely to give them up. However, we might pause for a moment and come to rest at the stark fact that the Benedictine mandate is to seek God in all things. All things. Not just the joyful things. Not just the pleasant things. Not just the reasonable things. All things. All things include the storm cloud. If we are truly to seek God, without a shred of our own well-being disguised in the search, we must at some point seek God with no strings attached.

The psalmist has captured both dilemma and grace: “You called in distress and I saved you./ I answered, concealed in the storm cloud”. We may not recognize the salvation. We may not hear the answer. We may not see the storm cloud swirl aside, even for a moment, so that we can glimpse the face of God. Nevertheless, in the darkness of faith, we reach out and touch God in the irreplaceable split second when the heart knows beyond doubt that we have found the one we seek. It changes nothing: the suffering closes over us again. It changes everything: we who suffer will never be the same again. As Job discovered in his moment of truth, it is enough.

And it is gift, not achievement. All we can do is lay aside our frantic quest for our own fix and, in the poverty and nakedness of faith, stand before the door concealing God and knock. It will, we have been promised, open.

See Job 38-41; Matthew 7:7

©2007, Abbey of St. Walburga, Virginia Dale CO