The sense of pain and sacrifice
10
Apr
Death causes us pain, fear and even despair; in the face of a pandemic, it reveals
aspects of tragedy, anxiety and apprehension, and we can do everything we can to prevent greater pain, but some go further and worry and donate to reduce the pain of others.
This is a human meaning, but the divine goes beyond what it means to be able to donate one’s life, or to put it at risk for the sake of the Other, only in this limit do we really understand the meaning.
Teilhard de Chardin, after admitting that the cross means “evasion out of this world” (p. 114), will explain to us that it is precisely it (in the present case the fear of death by the pandemic, “that exactly the path of human effort , supernaturally rectified and prolonged.
Because we have fully understood the meaning of the Cross, we no longer risk thinking that life is sad and ugly. We simply become more aware of its unspeakable seriousness.”(page 115).
So we thought of the happy days that we could walk freely and savor the air of the city, see the beaches now banned from being visited, the joyful family lunches, but it is for this loss that we now look with other eyes whose blindness could not allow.
How beautiful it would be an Easter Sunday with the whole family, or just going out to see happy autumn days in the southern hemisphere or early spring in the northern hemisphere, but it is this pain and this terrible pandemic that makes us “change glasses”, also in spiritual aspect.
So Chardin points out: “the cross is not an inhuman thing, but a superhuman one. We see well that the origin of Humanity today, the Cross was erected at the front of the road that leads to the highest peaks of creation ”, we will have to rethink home and social life after this pandemic. Chardin invites us to the mystery: “let us get closer. And we will recognize the flamed Seraph of the Alverne (picture), the one whose passion and compassion are “incendium mentis” *. For the Christian, it is not a question of disappearing in the shadow of the Cross, but of ascending in the light of the Cross.” (page 116).
Take advantage of this night of the pandemic to shed light on the “night of culture”, on the “night of God” and on the “night of the senses” that seemed to make us suppress all sensitivity to human life and the Other.
Let us live these three “nights” well to achieve an Easter (in sense of passage) for all humanity.
* incendium mentis – David Grummet says that in Chardin it is “fire of divine love in our soul”.
Chardin, T. (no year) O meio divino (The divine medium). Lisbon: Editorial Presença.
