Struggles and perseverance

This letter from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin to his cousin Mageurite really made me pause and reflect. Here are the parts of the letter that struck a chord in me:

[Hersin-Coupigny] 7th October 1915

... I made a tour of the trenches on the eve of the attack to people I knew and to give communion to  some (all to whom I offered it, accepted; I was limited by the smallness of my pyx). You can't imagine what emotions I then experienced, nor what one feels is conveyed in the clasp of a man who shakes one's hand, at a bend in a communications trench, after one has given him God – while the shells are going across, almost like a solid vault overhead, with a continual hum, on their way to demolish the trenches 200 metres further on, the trenches we'll have to move into as soon as the bombardment stops. There's no doubt about it: The only man who knows [who experiences] right in the innermost depths of his being the weight and grandeur of war, is the man who goes over the top with bayonet and grenade. In that moment training, of course, and a sort of intoxication play a large part; but even so it is still true that the infantryman leaving his trench for the attack is a man apart, a man who has lived a minute of life of which other men have simply no conception at all.

I am ashamed, as you may imagine, to think that I stayed in the communication trenches while my friends went out to their death. So many of them never came back – first among them, my best friend in the regiment, and the finest soldier I've yet known, poor Commandant Lefebvre ...

What is going to emerge from this ghastly struggle? It's more and more the crisis, the desperately slow evolution of a rebirth of Europe. Yet could things move any more quickly? ... We must offer our existence to God, who neither wastes nor spoils, but rather makes use, better than we could ever anticipate, of the struggles in which we are enveloped. If I said I didn't feel any weariness, I wouldn't be speaking the truth. As soon as the trenches lose the attraction of novelty, you easily become heartily sick of them – particularly, perhaps, when, like me, the work you've given yourself to involves witnessing all the miseries, one after another, without sharing in the battle or victory. Pray to God the he may give me the strength to hold out as long as he should wish me to. When the regiment, for the third time, fills up with new faces, it's hard work to start making friends again, to form relationships, in the hopes of being able to give someone words of advice or absolution when the next attack comes. God grant that we may remain his workers to the end. ...

This letter is set in the trenches of World War I, but couldn't it just as well apply to the wars of today? We can never really know what it's like to be a soldier on the front line, or on a patrol somewhere in a hostile, foreign land. As we sit back here in relative safety, people die in war. And what will emerge from this struggle? We are understandably impatient and weary; and perhaps we're hesitant to get too intimate with what's really going on.

It seems to me that Teilhard's experience here also applies to the 'wars' of poverty, HIV/AIDS and other diseases that decimate some countries, persecuted refugees, inner-city struggles, rural poverty and so on. Can we imagine the emotions we might feel from a close, spiritual connection with someone we know is facing persecution, chronic disease, hunger, street violence, or death? Would we feel shame for being close to them yet removed from that same danger? And what will emerge from these struggles around the world and in our own back yards? Maybe we get weary from constantly giving, or being called to give, of ourselves and our resources to causes that don't seem to get resolved. It can be hard to keep going in the midst of what seems to be constant struggle, constant misery.

As I read this letter from Teilhard, I was also reminded that there are plenty of Jesuits today who could probably relate to his experiences in the trenches of World War I. The front lines may be different, but the 'ghastly' struggles are just as real.

Comments

[wayne]

Hey Steve--- I have not stopped by for a while. You deserve that nomination. sometimes I forget that my work takes me into a trench of sorts, but mostky I try to avoid them.... lots to think about.

[Jeff]

My brother-in-law told me about his novitiate in Jamaica, which included being attacked in a prison where he had gone to teach reading and writing. A few weeks after he came back to the States, the old Jesuit with whom he'd been living was murdered. It's a very rough place.

It's good to know of these things, especially when in certain circles the Jesuits are accused of being cushy-living dilettantes.

I read those words of Chardin and I wonder what went through his mind years later, after he was attacked so frequently by small-minded men who had never seen the kinds of things that he had seen.

[Steve Bogner]

Jeff, that's a sad story; and I'm sure there are many others similar to it that we never hear about. He surely wasn't a 'small-minded' man and because of that it was easy for others to lob judgments his way.

[crystal]

Steve, thanks for posting this stuff by Chardin. I'd always thought of him as kind of cold and distanced. And thanks :-)

[Steve Bogner]

You're welcome, Crystal. I like sharing good stuff.

[Patrick]

Hi Steve.

I managed to misdirect this posting last week.

"God neither spoils nor wastes....but makes use of...."

My thesis in a nutshell. We can moan about our suffering in whatever form it appears and we can ask God to remove it, etc. Or we can ask our Creator to transform our suffering into something which will help US recognise the Presence of God(Love).

In that Garden, Jesus prayed to Abba, that if possible remove this suffering, He knew was coming, but if not removed then make something good of it. He trusted that the One who allowed this suffering happen could remove it and/or could transform it. Jesus knew either way redemption would come through this moment. What a use of suffering and a death. We were to receive reconciliation and be made whole again in relationship with our Creator, our Origin.

I misssed the refernces for the Letter from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Could you send it to me. It will be an excellent source for my literature review on transforming suffering. As ever Thank You Steve. The full Joy of Easter and the fulfilled Hope of the Resurrection be with You and your family, always, and any who accept it. Patrick