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Slant Books - Lorenzo Albacete

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43 pages

English

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The experience of suffering has posed a profound existential challenge to human hearts and minds throughout history. But it has become especially problematic in our time, when, with our good intentions and technological prowess, we seek to relieve the suffering of our patients at any cost, while in the end reducing the fullness of their personhood.

What we have failed to grasp is that the one who suffers yearns not only for relief from pain but a response to the deep-seated questions that suffering provokes.

Cry of the Heart is the late Monsignor Lorenzo Albacete's incisive and heartfelt look at what the experience of suffering reveals to each of us. He draws upon insights from literary figures such as Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, and Elie Wiesel; adds the wisdom of Saints John Paul II and Padre Pio; and engages our own everyday human experience. Albacete challenges caretakers and friends to co-suffer with those in distress, by not only treating their mental and physical symptoms, but also participating in their questions in a relationship directed to the redemptive love of the Mystery who makes us.

In addition to a foreword by Albacete's close friend, Cardinal Seán O'Malley, Cry of the Heart also includes a newly-researched biographical essay about the author that provides surprising insights into the man and his work.

Foreword by Seán Cardinal O'Malley

1: A Mystery to be Lived

2: You Cannot Love What Shocks You

3: Suffering and Pain

4: Suffering, Grace, and Identity

5: The Mystery of the Cross

6: To Complete What is Lacking

Lorenzo Albacete: A Short Biography by John Touhey

Acknowledgments

Sujets

Spiritual Growth

Christian Living

Bereavement

Philosophie et théologie

Catholic Church

Catholic

Christianity

Religion

Grief

Death

Informations

Publié par	Slant Books
Date de parution	15 février 2023
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781639821280
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0650€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Cry of the Heart
Lorenzo Albacete
foreword by Cardinal Seán O’Malley
Cry of the Heart
On the Meaning of Suffering

Cry of the Heart
On the Meaning of Suffering
Copyright © 2023 The Albacete Forum. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Slant Books, P.O. Box 60295 , Seattle, WA 98160 .
Slant Books
P.O. Box 60295
Seattle, WA 98160
www.slantbooks.com
Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Names: Albacete, Lorenzo | O’Malley, Cardinal Seán
Title: Cry of the heart : on the meaning of suffering / Lorenzo Albacete
Description: Seattle, WA: Slant Books, 2023
Identifiers: isbn 978-1-63982-127-3 ( hardcover ) |isbn 978-1-63982-126-6 ( paperback ) | isbn 978-1-63982-128-0 ( ebook )
Subjects: LCSH: Suffering | Suffering--Religious aspects | Suffering of God
Foreword
TOWARDS THE END OF her life, Doña Conchita Cintron Viuda de Albacete lay almost motionless in her nursing home bed. She was a shadow of her former self, and she looked so tiny that she could have been an injured bird that fell from the nest and was tucked carefully into the covers. The twinkle in her eyes was gone, her riotous sense of humor evaporated along with her beautiful smile, her winsome personality, and her incredible don de gente (people skills). I remember visiting her in the nursing home and seeing her curled up in the bedclothes. It was heart-rending.
I took her hand and called her by name, but she no longer recognized me or had the strength to respond. Then I noticed the huge portrait of the Sacred Heart of Jesus that her son Lorenzo had placed directly over his mother’s bed. I knew it was Lorenzo who had put it there because below the picture in very large print was written: “¡APESAR DE TODO, GRACIAS, SEÑOR!” (In spite of everything, thank you, Lord).
The phrase was vintage Lorenzo, not just because it was zany, but because it said something profound in the midst of humor. St. Francis used to say that the cross was his book. Lorenzo spent a lot of time studying that book where he discovered so much about the first Adam and the second Adam—the first whose disobedience brought death into the world and the second whose obedience brought grace and new life. The tree of the garden of Eden is replaced by the tree of the cross.
For many people, science, technology, and medicine have replaced faith as the compass for their lives. We live in a world of secularization, political correctness, cancel culture, and strident polarization. One author has described the Church as a colony of resident aliens. St. Paul says that our commonwealth is in heaven and Lorenzo would use that to show that we are a colony of heaven. Like the Jews in the diaspora, believers are strangers in a strange land. A colony is an outpost, a beachhead, an island of one culture in the middle of another, a place where the values of the homeland are passed on to the young, the place where the distinctive language and lifestyle of resident aliens are lovingly nurtured and reinforced.
Yet Lorenzo Albacete never feared engaging with those who did not believe. He was respectful of their questioning and sought to enter into a real dialogue with them, just as Pope Francis is always urging us to do.
The problem of evil and the suffering of the innocent are often huge obstacles to embracing the faith. Lorenzo found the response to these questions in the book of the cross.
Science can answer many questions about the world around us, but it cannot tell us the value of things, our own identity, our purpose and mission. These things can be discovered only by faith, a faith nurtured by prayer. In today’s world, pain is seen as the new sin that needs to be eliminated. Ironically enough, many of our contemporaries are convinced that when life is difficult or inconvenient it should be eliminated. The governments in our Western democracies are constantly moving the goalposts of protection for human life. Individuals strive to avoid pain and stress by turning to alcohol, drugs, and reckless sexual behaviors.
So great is the horror of bodily pain that annually billions of dollars in our country are spent by those who can afford it to avoid pain or to lessen it. It is not just our bodies that suffer; there is pain in the human soul to be rejected by those we love. To be misunderstood and worse still to be misrepresented is painful. If we are passed over when others are chosen, or ignored when others are recognized or praised, or forgotten when others are remembered, it can be painful. To make mistakes and as a consequence to be embarrassed or ashamed, or to do what is wrong and then have to live with the memory of our sins, is always painful.
It is comforting to see in the Gospels that an important part of Jesus’s ministry is alleviating people’s pain, the pain in their bodies and in their souls. In a fascinating study of how Jesus managed his time, it was revealed that Jesus spent most of his time caring for the sick and performing works of mercy. It is obvious that he does not cure everyone or eliminate all disease or suffering. In many ways, he comes to share our suffering, our hunger and fatigue, our loneliness, and our pain in the bodily pain of his passion and crucifixion, but also in the psychological pain of the agony in the garden: the pain of being betrayed, the pain of being abandoned.
Jesus comes among us as the suffering servant, and by his stripes, we are healed. The very symbol of our Christian faith is the cross which is an instrument of torture and death. For those who see Christianity from outside, the cross is a puzzling symbol. We should ask ourselves how we would react if we saw someone hanging a replica of a guillotine or an electric chair on the wall of their home and that gruesome symbol was supposed to represent their religion. Yet that is precisely what we do, because Jesus has transformed the cross into a symbol of victory and hope.
Indeed St. Francis said the cross was the book where he was able to read the greatest love story in history. On the cross, Jesus shows us by his passion and death how profitable prayerful suffering can be. The most important single lesson humankind has to learn is the meaning of suffering and its value. It took God to teach us. And He has to resort to the extreme expedient of becoming man and suffering Himself to prove to us that suffering is not meaningless and that it is one of the most valuable experiences in human life.
The cross is a two-edged sword. Without prayer, the cross becomes death and destruction. It can cause us to turn in on ourselves, to be blind to the sufferings of others, to be filled with self-pity, to be enraged, to be jealous of those who are not suffering, to be bitter, and to despair. When the cross is borne with love, it becomes life-giving, increasing our capacity for love and empathy; it allows us to be united with Christ in love and to witness to his power in our lives.
Bonhoeffer spoke about cheap grace and costly grace. We live in a world where many are pandering to the merchants of cheap grace. The grace of discipleship is a costly grace and comes when we embrace the cross. When St. Peter fled from Gethsemane, he tried to follow Jesus at a safe distance, when suddenly he was identified by his accent. The frightened Peter denies even knowing Jesus, and not to a soldier with a long spear, but to a waitress with an attitude. Eventually, Peter discovers that the only way to follow Jesus is not at a safe distance but up close.
In a world chasing after cheap grace and instant mysticism with all sorts of fads and gimmicks presented as means of becoming “one with the absolute,” it is helpful to reflect on the words of Ignatius of Loyola:
If God gives you an abundant harvest of trials, it is a sign of great holiness which he desires you to attain. Do you want to become a great saint? Ask God to send you many sufferings. The flame of divine love never rises higher than when fed with the wood of the Cross, which the infinite charity of the Savior used to finish his sacrifice. All the pleasures of the world are nothing compared to the sweetness found in the gall and vinegar offered to Jesus Christ, that is, hard and painful things endured for Jesus Christ and with Jesus Christ.
Lorenzo Albacete’s profound reflections are teaching us how to say yes to the life-giving cross, to find meaning in the mystery, and to be able to read in the cross the greatest love story ever told.
—Cardinal Seán O’Malley

1
A Mystery to Be Lived
I WOULD NEVER ATTEMPT to offer an answer to the problem that suffering poses to believers. Suffering is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be lived. As a Catholic Christian, I see the problem of suffering as inseparable from the cross of Jesus. But this is not the perspective I have adopted here, because I do not wish to begin by speaking only to other Christians. I want to start by reflecting on experiences we all have because we are human beings, whatever our beliefs.
I remember what François Mauriac, the French Catholic writer, wrote in his introduction to Elie Wiesel’s The Night Trilogy . As a young journalist for a Tel Aviv newspaper, Wiesel had interviewed Mauriac. Soon they were engaged in a personal conversation about the Holocaust. Mauriac told Wiesel that his wife said she’d witnessed Jewish children at the Austerlitz train station being torn away from their mothers, and even though she didn’t know what awaited them in the camps, she was horrified. Mauriac writes:
I believe that on that day I touched for the first time upon the mystery of iniquity whose revelation was to mark the end of an era and the beginning of another. The dream which Western