I am surprised to find myself in this position – that is, here as a “speaker.” When I said to Oonah two years ago at the Carmelite Institute, “Why can’t we do something like this with our stuff?,” I simply wanted a conversation about the things we are always talking about – prayer and contemplation – but I didn’t want just to talk about them. I wanted more. I wanted to know how people, especially RSCJ’s, pray day in and day out in this world – this grief stricken, broken hearted world. I’m still hoping for that!

I begin with this story which explains why I ended up with being assigned to speak about the Spirituality of the Pierced Heart of Christ. When Pati Garcia was on the Central Team, she came to New York City. At the area meeting she spoke at length about “the spirituality of the Society.” I remember people nodding their heads as she spoke, but I did not nod my head because I didn’t know what she meant. Finally I asked her, “What is the spirituality of the Society?” She replied, “It is the spirituality of the pierced Heart of Christ.” Again I was aware of nodding heads. But again, I did not know what she meant. “What does that mean?” I asked her. She replied, something like this, “It means that we take into our hearts the pain of the world because we share the pierced Heart of Christ.” I did not say anything – but I remember thinking “I’ve been doing that all my life.” I didn’t know until that moment that the society had a specific spirituality and that I shared in it.

Now I actually do not speak much about “spirituality” – I am inclined to speak about a “prayer” and a “faith” instead. Nor do I speak much about the “Pierced Heart of Christ” except in a very formal way. However, I finally decided to let things be because “Spirituality of the Pierced Heart of Christ “ is as good a title as any for the mystery about which I am going to speak. I am going to risk talking about my own prayer experience of “taking into my heart the suffering of the world.” That is an enormous mystery, given who I am and where I live. Dorothee Soelle described this “place” this way, as far back as 1975:

“Far and wide, contemporary Christianity is the suffering-free religion for a world perceived as without suffering. It is the religion of the rich, the white, the industrial nations. Its God is a mild and apathetic being. In this religion suffering is shrunken down into a purely personal affair without general interest. For the great suffering upon which the nations build their prosperity occurs in other parts of the world, far outside our field of vision…The world of the rich, sealed airtight against hunger and disease, doesn’t need to devote any special attention to the problem of suffering even in its own midst. This inner apathy is in accord the political and economic situation. Exploitation needs a certain amount of apathy to run its course smoothly.” (Suffering, Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1975 p. 128)

What Pati Garcia calls the Spirituality of the Pierced Heart of Christ is the antithesis of an apathetic world with its apathetic god. The saints of our tradition bear witness to this. I have always been puzzled and, indeed, put off, by the insatiable desire for and glorification of suffering shown in the writings of so many saints. I do not speak their language. I don’t even like their language. I do not speak Pati’s language either. I do not think in “Pierced Heart of Christ” terms. I do not meditate on the words. But I meditate on the passion all the time, in every liturgical season. I didn’t set out do this. It is, rather, something that has happened to me over the years. The crucifix has become my primary icon although I love and appreciate others. I use the readings of the day, I listen (actually listen) to the gospel, and I look at the crucifix. That is where I fix my attention, where

I center, and there I see day after day the suffering of our world, all the images of suffering women, children and men, in the third world, the undeveloped nations, and on our city streets, that fill our newspapers and TV. I am not conscious of calling those images to mind. They simply come. I am not aware of concentrating on the suffering of Jesus Christ

“back then.” I recognize the suffering of Christ in his body now, everyday, everywhere on the earth. Pascal said that till the end of the world, Christ still hangs on the cross. He is one with the victims of injustice and violence everywhere. I contemplate this reality and I take into my heart, in my own small way, the pain of the world.

I used to think of our “information age” with so much bad news and horrible images as a kind of curse. And I have often felt overwhelmed. But I am beginning to look on at as a grace – a gift of the Spirit of Truth – to know and share in the real passion of Christ whose body is crucified every day in the lives of the poor and the oppressed, in our wars, and in the abuse of our earth. I look on it as an invitation to “Watch and pray.” And the only way I can respond to that invitation without suffering severe “compassion fatigue” is by sitting before the crucifix where I am able to “Watch and pray” in spite of myself. And then I recognize that I never watch and pray alone. As the old hymn says:

“We thank you that your Church, unsleeping,

While earth rolls onward into light,

Through all the world its watch is keeping,

And rests not now by day or night.

Across each continent and island

As dawn leads on another day,

The voice of prayer is never silent,

Nor dies the strain of praise away.”

But even as I gain courage and consolation from this idea and experience of Church – there is the other side, the shadow side, the “dark night.” The universal Church through time and space is all great and grand and glorious, but what about my church? My church is the church of abused children, despised women, ignored laity, a distant and arrogant hierarchy; a church leadership silenced, not by hostile enemies, but by its own very real shame; a church leadership which seems to turn away from the suffering of the world to concentrate on liturgical niceties and the maintenance of clerical domination. I still naively expect some kind of support or strength to come from the official Church. Instead I am drained of strength – and, I sometimes think, faith, hope and charity. So I cannot look to that Church for help – but I daily hope and pray and find that I can look to the People of God for the strength I need. And as I look at crucifix I come face-to-face with utter powerlessness – the powerlessness of God in Christ, and then my own powerlessness, my suffering “shrunken down into a purely personal affair without general interest.” That is, the suffering of ordinary people the world over – the suffering of the People of God.

But, mysteriously, when I compare my suffering with the unimaginable suffering of the victims of injustice, violence, oppression, and unspeakable poverty, especially in the third world, it is appears insignificant – but even so, it is part of a whole, and the whole is the suffering Body ofChrist. And even as I groan and grumble and wonder if there is any good news, any good future for them, for the world, for the Church, for me, I find that I can get up and go on. Going on has become an act of faith and hope and, again mysteriously, even joy for me . . . .  And it is this faith and hope and joy rather than old and once loved religious symbols and ideas that keep me going.

Since 9/11 I have become very fond of the word “duty.” In spite of the sense that nothing could possibly matter, I had to go to work. I had to visit patients of every age and prepare insulin weekly syringes, prefill weekly medication boxes, check blood pressures and blood sugars, check and weigh the new babies and teach their young mothers. I had to do my duty and at the end of the day I had equilibrium again. That has happened to me over and over again since that time – we have had so many crises. In each of them my “duty” has saved me – what the saints call the corporeal works of mercy!

I reread Constance Fitzgerald’s “Impasse and the Dark Night” again in the last few weeks. I recognize the reality of it, but about my own life I have to say I am not really in that dark night. I am in a kind of brownout where nothing is light, nothing is dark, and nothing is clear – except the suffering of the world. When I go to prayer, when I pay attention, when I center, that is quite clear. And I ask myself, if that is in some way the spirituality of the

Society, do other RSCJ’s experience it? And if so, how do they experience it? And how do they sustain it?

Finally, I want to emphasize that this prayer and spirituality is not unredeemed agony and depression. It is for me a dark and hard mystery. But it is not sad. And of course, the actual time of prayer is a focus time, a time for allowing the world to impinge on me. When the time is finished I simply get on with the daily grind with all its usual ups and downs, times of being more or less aware, times of seeing and hearing nothing. And I am often overwhelmed by the goodness of ordinary people, the People of God, I rejoice constantly in the beauty of the earth, and I am frequently surprised by joy, thanksgiving, laughter, enjoyment and gratitude.