Divorce causes pain. Lots of pain. Long, drawn out pain. Emotional and psychological pain. Blinding pain. Depressing pain. Pain without seeming remedy. More pain than I have experienced in any other way. As I have said before, I think the worst scourge on the face of the earth is abortion – killing the innocents for sexual convenience. But having experienced it, I think that divorce is the second worst scourge on the earth. The pain and destruction – the devestation caused by it is enormous, affecting the immediate family, but also extended families, and friends, fellow parishoners and even neighbors. Relationships are destroyed and the community of life forged by those relationships and the love exchanged is shattered.
Let me be clear here: I can only talk from the experience of having divorce thrust on me, unwillingly and from my perspective, needlessly. I speak from that vantage point only.
So, as a Catholic dad, what do I do with the pain I feel? I had the occasion to share pizza and a glass of wine with a fellow parishoner a few weeks ago who was starting down the divorce path, after his wife tossed him out. He was with his father who was visiting trying to help his son deal with it. The son was in pain, a LOT of pain. I remember those days and that pain very well. Searing, blinding pain that I thought would claim my life with a heart attack or something. So he was in pain. I tried to talk to him about his pain and what his Catholic faith offered as a way to deal with it. He was angry and stayed in it. I found out several weeks later that he had come back to the same place looking for me a week later, perhaps to help him deal with what he detected was the truth. But not finding me, he became frustrated and abusive, and ended up being hauled out to jail by the police. Sad.
So what does a Catholic dad do with the pain he feels as he experiences divorce?
I will give you a radical answer: offer it to Jesus Christ for your sins and those of your family and loved ones and all families suffering.
I believe that while divorce is a scourge and has no place in the lives of any family, it represents an unmatched opportunity for redemptive suffering. I believe that if all the Catholic dads in the world who were going through or had gone through an unwanted divorce were to offer their suffering and pain for those intentions, the world would be radically changed in the blink of an eye.
What else can I possibly do with the pain I am in? Oh, sure, I see it all around me. Sex, drugs, alcohol, the wild life, escapism, a live-in, compensations, anger, revenge and even violence. Where so many Catholic dads take their pain is more destructive, to themselves, their families and their souls – their salvation.
But I am Catholic and being a Catholic, it affects every aspect of my life, including my thoughts and actions. Divorce did not just happen to me. It takes two to tango. But only one to end the tango. One can be unfaithful to their faith or misled by the world. I share some culpability, or maybe even most.
The great mystery of my faith is that no matter who is “at fault”, I can humbly offer the pain each day and each moment to Christ in the economy of redemption for the salvation of my soul and that of others. If the saints could offer the pain of little discomforts , illnesses, abuse and even torture and death, then I can offer the pains, emotional, psychological, intelectual, physical and spiritual for the same reasons.
As I work through the pain, I constantly pray to offer it yes, but also I pray that the fire of the pain in my soul might burn out all the impurities there. Like gold in the crucible as scripture says. So may all the imperfections in my soul be burned out!
The pain from this divorce is so severe at times I can hardly function. At those times, I have to beg God for the grace to take the next step, to prepare the next meal, do the next load of laundry, help my handicapped son with his shower or say night prayers with the boys. It is a place of deep humiliation – I can only function as a father by begging God for the grace to carry out the rudiments of being a human being. I am reduced to being a beggar to exist.
In my pain and humiliation, I seek God, not for comfort or compensation, but for peace. I keep thinking about the Last Supper and Jesus who knew what He was going to suffer, stayed focused on why He came and His mission of salvation. Not once on the way from the Last Supper to the Cruxification did He become angry or hateful or vengeful. With one thought he could have ended it or the existence of any or all there. He did not.
He can and has shown me how to walk that some path, even though I have not walked it without failing many times. So I take my pain there, to the Cross and give it to Him. Hang it on the Cross with Him. And pray for peace within me. And not judge or condemn because I am in this place of suffering. May my suffering be joined to His for His redemptive purposes.
Then I may know peace. Even as I carry the Cross of my state in life.