St. Juliana of Nicomedia (c. 270 A.D.), also known as St. Juliana of Cumae, was the daughter of noble pagan parents, born in Nicomedia, a Greek city in ancient Turkey. Although her father was hostile to Christians, Juliana secretly accepted baptism. Her father arranged her marriage to a pagan nobleman and Roman senator. When the time for her wedding came, Juliana refused her consent to be married unless her betrothed converted to the Christian faith. Her father retaliated by mercilessly abusing her, but Juliana would not give in. Her betrothed then denounced her as a Christian before the tribunal under the persecutions of the Roman Emperor Diocletian. St. Juliana was unwavering in her faith, even after the devil himself appeared to tempt her during her sufferings. She was then publicly tortured by being burned, boiled in oil, and finally beheaded. Some accounts say she died together with St. Barbara. Many were converted to the Christian faith upon witnessing her fortitude in the face of her tortures. St. Juliana is the patron saint of sickness and bodily ills. Her feast day is February 16th
Eighty years ago C. S. Lewis wrote The Problem of Pain. The title makes me laugh. Does anyone need to be convinced that pain is a problem? What Lewis was after, of course, is the solution to pain. A dedicated Christian apologist, he sought an explanation for suffering that respects both God’s reputation for goodness and the searing reality of our pain. If God is good, why is there so much suffering? If God can make a world free from suffering by willing it, why the cross?
Some theological conundrums are theoretical. How many angels dance on a pinhead? Whatever answer you posit to such a question, it doesn’t change what you decide to eat for lunch. But when it comes to suffering, we all have skin in the game. It matters what we say about a God who can do anything and still chooses to hang on a cross.
The church maintains that suffering can be salvific. Suffering acts like a spiritual salve on the world’s wounds. Suffering, patiently embraced on Earth, can even rescue souls from anguish on the other side, as spiritual masters have taught. As St. Paul frames it, we can unite our pain to that of Christ on the cross, and the two become one in the great work of divine rescue. This is not to say the crucifixion isn’t sufficient to cover the sin of the world. Your friend’s chemotherapy and my sister’s depression aren’t events that humanity has been in aching need of. Yet when we unite our pain mystically with the pain of Jesus, our tears are given an exalted meaning and purpose.
Because truly: What else are we going to do with all this agony? Still, in seeking a theological compartment that dignifies the legacy of pain, we unwittingly open a door to eccentric practices that seem to glorify pain itself. Saints for centuries donned hair shirts, slept in stress positions, whipped themselves, or stayed in abusive marriages hoping to save their errant spouses from condemnation. Most of us today are convinced this sort of elective suffering isn’t at all equivalent to Jesus submitting to the cross. Is there a line we can draw between suffering that saves and pain that’s just plain unnecessary?
A year ago I broke my shoulder. It was a funny break—not funny ha ha but funny strange. During an unspectacular stumble on a footpath, I put out my right arm to break the fall, the shoulder taking the impact. Pain radiated through to my fingers and down my side. In struggling to my feet, the arm was unresponsive. A passerby tied my scarf into a sling for me. The useless arm didn’t hurt, but the pain in my back was like a madman with a knife riding an elevator up and down my spine, stabbing randomly and gleefully without pity. It wasn’t good.ADVERTISEMENT
At urgent care the doctor reviewed the X-ray and offered the grateful opinion that the arm wasn’t broken. “Sometimes these things just resolve themselves,” he said encouragingly. “You should probably see a specialist to be sure.” This was unfortunately hard to do during a spiking pandemic, with hospitals overflowing into tents and medical personnel at a premium. Also, I was losing my insurance in two weeks, relocating to another state. If the arm wasn’t broken, it would have to wait.
It took 10 weeks to arrive at the new address, find a doctor taking new patients, and snare an appointment. And then it took another month to be referred to a specialist, who took a second X-ray and again pronounced the arm unbroken. Four months past the fall, I could raise the arm through most of its range, and it didn’t really hurt. But I hurt—constantly. I moved through waves of pain by day and was drilled with pain all night. The specialist ordered an MRI “to see what may be going on.” Acquiring that appointment took another month.
It matters what we say about a God who can do anything and still chooses to hang on a cross.
So it was five months into a season of anguish when the doctor’s assistant phoned. “Don’t move your arm, and don’t lift anything,” she advised. “Your shoulder’s broken.” The MRI revealed a most clever fracture, so perfectly aligned an X-ray couldn’t detect it: a break of the humerus bone which, as I said, isn’t as funny as it sounds. Part of the bone was still attached to the tendon so that, with each movement, the fragments pulled apart like accordion bellows. This created the silent music of my suffering.
Secured by a body harness, I now endured right-sided immobility to allow the bone time to mend. When released from captivity, the arm hung from the shoulder like an oddly curved fish. Then came physical therapy to restore function. With it I learned the vital distinctions between good pain and bad pain. The five months spent dragging around a broken shoulder had been good for nothing. The bone hadn’t knit together, and the suffering had been wasted. With the proper exercises I felt muscle burn, which was good pain. Stabbing twinges were not. Soreness and aches meant progress; sparkling or drilling pain, not so much. The anguish before physical therapy hadn’t been purposeful. The pain of therapy was salvific. It was giving my arm back to me. Good pain, I came to understand, tends toward strength, healing, and restoration. It widens possibilities. Bad pain signals increased injury and harm. It narrows our focus and darkens hope.
Here’s a cold fact: None of us escapes suffering. When it comes to our woundedness, movement will hurt whether we’re rehabbing the injury or not. So why not invest our pain in the direction of hope? This is what makes Good Friday so good: The sacrifice of Jesus doesn’t pour into a grave but rather opens the door of the tomb. In the same way, no one undergoes surgery or difficult medical treatments for the sake of suffering but in hope of restoring health or extending life.
Useful pain and sacrifice tend toward discernible good. People aren’t named martyrs for throwing themselves in harm’s way. A martyr’s passion promotes some higher purpose. We become living martyrs of charity if we downsize our lifestyles to tithe a portion of our earnings to the cause of justice. Such a sacrifice gives life. By contrast, remaining in a toxic situation, even out of love or loyalty, is an unhealthy and destructive sacrifice.
Why not invest our pain in the direction of hope?
When we lose someone to death, we suffer tremendously. We can use that sadness, perhaps by reaching out to others in a grief support group. Isolating and focusing on the crater left by a loved one’s absence, meanwhile, is an unsalvific use of our pain. Hurting is inevitable either way. Isn’t it better to redeem this inescapable investment in grief?
Sickness and death are unavoidable. We’ll all walk through this bitter valley of shadows with people we love. The reason the church identifies a sacrament to anoint the sick is because sickness has something to reveal to us. Some will turn illness into a testimony of what they believe life is about. They’ll spend their most mortal hours forgiving and seeking forgiveness, demonstrating compassion and caring, witnessing to their confidence in God. This kind of suffering rescues not only those who are sick but potentially everyone around them.
If there is glory in suffering, if we can speak of such things as glorified wounds, they’re the kind that testify to something beyond the pain endured. Since no one has a choice about whether to suffer, isn’t it a good idea to learn how to carry our pain well?
This article also appears in the September 2021 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 86, No. 9, pages 47-49). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
“Yet such are the pity and compassion of this Lord of ours, so desirous is He that we should seek Him and enjoy His company, that in one way or another He never ceases calling us to Him . . . God here speaks to souls through words uttered by pious people, by sermons or good books, and in many other such ways. Sometimes He calls souls by means of sickness or troubles, or by some truth He teaches them during prayer, for tepid as they may be in seeking Him, yet God holds them very dear.”— St. Teresa of Avila, p.26
How hard it is to slow down and let the healing happen when the very sickness is a fear of slowing down, of not being able to function as well as we could, of paralysis of will. Healing is most impossible when we cannot forget the sickness long enough for healing to start. Rarely do we realize the healing power that is going on inside us. We do not notice it because we mistake it for something else, we mistake it for an evil. If we have learned to enter into prayer, then we see with new eyes and hear with new ears. And what we perceive is that what we previously thought was surely some scourge of Satan in our lives, is in fact the healing hand of God leading us through the fire of suffering in order to purify and heal what only suffering can heal.
In our sickness we need a saviour, in our wanderings a guide, in our blindness someone to show us the light, in our thirst the fountain of living water which quenches forever the thirst of those who drink from it. We dead people need life, we sheep need a shepherd, we children need a teacher, the whole world needs Jesus!
If we would understand the profound wisdom of the most holy shepherd and teacher, the ruler of the universe and the Word of the Father, when using an allegory he calls himself the shepherd of the sheep, we can do so for he is also the teacher of little ones.
Speaking at some length through Ezekiel to the Jewish elders, he gives them a salutary example of true solicitude. I will bind up the injured, he says; I will heal the sick; I will bring back the strays and pasture them on my holy mountain [cf. Ezek 31:11–16]. These are the promises of the Good Shepherd. . . .
Such is our Teacher, both good and just. He said he had not come to be served but to serve, and so the gospel shows him tired out, he who laboured for our sake and promised to give his life as a ransom for many [Matt 20:28; Mark 10:45], a thing which, as he said, only the Good Shepherd will do.
How bountiful the giver who for our sake gives his most precious possession, his own life! He is a real benefactor and friend, who desired to be our brother when he might have been our Lord, and who in his goodness even went so far as to die for us!
To think that a mere forty days of Lent once seemed an arduous journey.
Who could have guessed at the outset of Lent 2020 how long the desert sojourning would last? That those forty days would be followed by forty more, and forty more, and so on and so forth until . . . Lent x 10. By my calculations—yes, I’m counting—by the time Easter arrives, it will have been about 400 days since the end of the world as most of us knew it.
Patience worn out by the journey, anyone? Disgusted with the wretched sickness and death? Starving for face-to-face conversations . . . shared meals . . . meetings that are not virtual? Longing to hold a newborn, tickle a toddler, give your grandparents a hug?
From this vantage point, we might wonder if the Israelites were too quick to classify their desert complaining as sinful. After all, our friends the psalmists had no problem loudly sharing their every thought with God. If complaint and lament are where we are at, shouldn’t we be honest with God? Trusting that somehow, we know not how, God can take it.
We know not how? Let’s be honest. Where did we begin this Lenten journey? And with whom? In the desert. With Jesus. He gets it.
Long and painful as the road to Jerusalem was, his undying words are soothing balm: The one who sent me is with me. He has not left me alone. Jesus spoke this way, and we believe him.
Deep into this present and seemingly continuous Lent, Easter is on the horizon. Honest to God, we are not alone. Never have been and never will be.
If you will give earnest heed to the voice of the Lord your God, and do what is right in His sight, and give ear to His commandments … I will put none of the diseases on you which I have put on the Egyptians; for I, the Lord, am your healer.” – Exodus 15:26 NASB
It is a message confirmed throughout the Bible: God desires us to be in health (3 John 1:2). This fact was central to the ministry of Jesus, who healed all who were brought to Him, including those with every kind of illness (Matthew 4:24). God Himself told the Israelites that He was their healer and gave them principles to help prevent sickness. But there were conditions.
First, they had to listen carefully to Him. He created strict dietary and living guidelines for the Israelites. And He knows that our lifestyles and habits are important. He can help us make the right choices, so our bodies work more efficiently.
Second, they were to “do what is right in his sight.” We cannot expect His blessing if we go our own way. We must pay attention to his commands, be sensitive to Him, and know His Word. And we need to “keep all His statutes” (v. 26). Realize that His Word gives principles by which to live to help us have health.
Make sure that you follow God’s formula for health. Declare the truths found in His Word, and put them into practice. Develop an intimate relationship with Him. Seek to be pure in His sight. Trust Him for health, rejoicing that He is the “the Lord who heals you” (v. 26 NKJV). And pray with confidence and faith for those you know who need healing.
Prayer
Father, these are people who need healing: ______. Thank You for healing in their lives. Help me to live in health. In Jesus’ name, amen.
St. Juliana of Nicomedia (c. 270 A.D.) was the daughter of noble pagan parents, born in Nicomedia, a Greek city in ancient Turkey. Although her father was hostile to Christians, Juliana secretly accepted baptism. Her father arranged her marriage to a pagan nobleman and Roman senator. When the time for her wedding came, Juliana refused her consent to be married unless her betrothed converted to the Christian faith. Her father retaliated by mercilessly abusing her, but Juliana would not give in. Her betrothed then denounced her as a Christian before the tribunal under the persecutions of the Roman Emperor Diocletian.
St. Juliana was unwavering in her faith, even after the devil himself appeared to tempt her during her sufferings. She was then publicly tortured by being burned, boiled in oil, and finally beheaded. Some accounts say she died together with St. Barbara. Many were converted to the Christian faith upon witnessing her fortitude in the face of her tortures.
St. Juliana is the patron saint of sickness and bodily ills. Her feast day is February 16th.See More About This Saint >
