One of the benefits of my MDiv program is the pastoral formation. I chose it precisely for this reason. I’d studied philosophy for four years, and at one point, we even talked about whether a thing such as a chair exists or if what exists is just the atoms that make it up. (My answer: I don’t care, so long as I can sit down.) So, I was in need of something that wasn’t divorced from life. Particularly in the case of questions concerning God, it didn’t make sense to study theology as a discipline confined to the academy. For me, part of this practical component is meeting with a Pastoral Formation Director, to whom I submit various reflections, questions, and goals I might have.

In our last meeting, we discussed the idea of a pastoral question. It’s supposed to be a question that drives you, that you take with you for years. Without realising it, I already had a question in mind. If you’ve followed me for long enough, you would remember my first post, where I talk about my favourite Bible verse: “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.” (Gn 50:20) In this one verse, we can see the intersection of a number of themes that interest me, but most notably: (1) God’s ability to bring about the good even through evil, and (2) the existence of human suffering. It dawned on me that I may have been misleading because, while I love this verse, I don’t embody it. I’m much more like Job, who was angry at God for the suffering that He permitted. So, like Job, I often ask myself: why? Couldn’t this all have been avoided? Of course, theologians have grappled with this question for eons! But they never have a satisfying answer, at least not one someone suffering would accept. Even in the Bible, we’re not given a justification by God for Job’s suffering: just more bloody questions! How frustrating! So, one of the questions I take with me is this: why does God permit people to suffer such pain and heartache, and how can one help those people?

I expressed my frustration to my Director, saying that when times have been tough for me, often people will ask about my spiritual life, as if life could be anything other than spiritual. I once joked about whether God wanted me to order Chinese or Mexican for take-out, and while this is satire, I nevertheless believe that even the everyday decisions have a spiritual component to them. We’re not simply bodies, after all: we’re souls, if you more secular folk would pardon the term. Anyone who’s ever read The Way of a Pilgrim would talk to you about this idea of life being an unceasing prayer, just as St Paul exhorts us to do (cf. 1 Th 5:16). By this, I don’t mean that we ought to get on our knees and ask God for a pony, though you’re welcome to do so! Rather, I meant “unceasing prayer” more along the lines of being aware of the divine activity as it unfolds in your life, but even still, this is very difficult sometimes.

We talked about a bit about this in the context of suffering. He compared it to being at the foot of the cross, where Christ is crucified, and witnessing that pain. I, on the other hand, jumped straight to the example of the thief crucified alongside Jesus. After all, suffering feels like complete shit, and in a sense you share his pain. “That’s an excellent example,” he told me, and going back to my quibbles with people asking about my spiritual life, he suggested another question that I might ask: “What is prayer?” Excellent question!

I’ve often wondered how I should describe it, and although I like what I had said about prayer being an awareness of the divine activity, this is not enough. Quite often, especially in the context of suffering, the divine feels absent, if not non-existent to some people, myself included. Perhaps I could broaden my definition to include looking for the divine. Indeed, this is one of the common errors in ministerial practice, my director said. Quite often we’re told to bring God to others, when what we ought to be doing is helping them to see that God is already with them. I’m no expert on how to do this, but it’s a sound idea, I reckon. Prayer, then, might be conceived of as one’s effort to do communicate or otherwise perceive the divine. (Of course, there are many different kinds of prayer, and this definition is preliminary. I have a long way to go.)

With suffering then, considered in the context of prayer, another question might be asked: how did Jesus deal with it? That is the practical concern, isn’t it? We only look for answers because we believe they’ll satisfy us, but that’s not really what we want to know. We want to know how to make it stop. I honestly have no answer. All I can say for sure is that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God” (Rm 8:38–39). I hope this offers comfort, though I’m almost positive it doesn’t lessen the difficulty.

Perhaps that answer lies in the answer to yet another question once put to me by my old spiritual director. After a time of great trial in my life, when I faced many difficulties and made many mistakes, she asked, “What was it that kept you going?”

I pondered how to answer. “God’s grace,” I said, “but that’s a textbook answer.”

“Yes,” she said, “there’s that, but what was it inside you that compelled you to persist?”

“I haven’t a bloody clue,” I laughed. “I’ll have to think about it.” I still do.

To be continued…