The Jesuit Guide To (Almost) Everything - James Martin [56]
Not too long ago I had lunch with a friend who lost his brother at a young age to cancer. My friend is a warm and generous person, and I knew that he was devastated by his brother’s loss. But it was still a privilege for me to hear him talk about what had happened, to see his tears, and to listen to him recount funny stories about his brother.
Telling your friend anyway helps to make the loss more concrete for you, it gives you the opportunity to accept your friend’s consolation, and it reminds you that you are known by another in an intimate way.
Being honest with God means sharing everything with God, not just the things that you think are appropriate for prayer, and not simply your gratitude and praise. Honesty means sharing things you might consider inappropriate for conversation with God.
Anger is a perfect example. It’s natural to be angry with God over suffering in our lives. Disappointment springs from all of us. Anger is a sign that we’re alive.
God can handle your anger no matter how hot it burns. God has been handling anger as long as humans have been praying. Just read the Book of Job in the Old Testament, where Job rails against God for causing his seemingly endless pain. Usually Job is seen as a patient man, and in the beginning of that book he is. But eventually Job loses his patience and begins to curse the day he was born. “I loathe my life,” he says. “I will give free utterances to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul” (Job 10:1).
Anger, sadness, frustration, disappointment, and bitterness in prayer have a long history. Why shouldn’t you allow yourself to express those same honest feelings too?
A few years ago, I told my spiritual director I was so frustrated that God didn’t seem to be doing anything to help me and that I used an obscenity in my prayer. One night I was so angry that I clenched my fists and shouted aloud, “How about some @#$% help, God!”
Some readers might be shocked that a priest would use language like that, especially in prayer. And I thought my spiritual director, a wise and gentle Jesuit priest named Damian, would reproach me. Instead Damian said, “That’s a good prayer.”
I thought he was kidding.
“That’s a good prayer because it’s honest,” he said. “God wants your honesty, Jim.” Being honest also made me feel that God now knew exactly how I felt. Have you ever had the experience of confiding something to a friend and feeling relief? It felt like God could now better accompany me, as a good friend might. Or, more accurately, I would be able to allow God to accompany me.
Saying it aloud also brought me face-to-face with my lamentable lack of gratitude. Sure, there was a big problem in my life, but there were some wonderful things going on at the same time. It was like an adolescent saying to his parent, “I hate you!” because he was asked to go to bed early or turn off his video games or take out the trash. Hearing myself talk like that—out loud—revealed how part of my relationship with God was childish and how much I wanted to change my approach to prayer.
Thou Art Indeed Just, Lord
This poem by the English Jesuit Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–1889), based on a lament from the Book of Jeremiah, expresses the poet’s frustration with God. Like most of Hopkins’s complex poems, you have to read it carefully to puzzle out what he’s saying, but once you get it, it packs a real punch.
Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?
Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now, leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build—but not I build; no,