On the Woody Allen "Motto," Love to Suffer and Suffer to Love

[[Sister Laurel, what does the motto, "Love to suffer and suffer to love," mean? Is this a common Christian motto or wisdom statement?]]

Thanks for your question. I had to Google this saying and found it (or at least a close variation of it) is associated with a Woody Allen movie called Love and Death (1975)! This means the brief answer to your question is no, this is neither a Christian motto, nor, as it stands, is it common Christian wisdom. (That is, as you have cited it, it may be common, but it is not Christian, and I would argue that its wisdom is doubtful and, possibly, destructive!) Since I haven't seen the movie, I can't tell you what it means in context (and context is key). The film is, however, a parody of the complexities of loving and suffering, and (perhaps too of living and dying). In some ways, it seems to be about the messiness and even the apparent irrationality of human love. 

Some of this is summarized in a passage by a younger woman speaking to her cousin Sonja about someone who is in love with another person they both know, while that second person is in love with someone else who is having an affair with another person entirely, who loves physically but not spiritually, and whose love interest is also in love with. . . and on it goes in a long chain of frustrating instances of love producing suffering! (I'll add the clip of this below.) It is both hysterical and fraught! One comes away with the sense that human love is complex and intimately linked to suffering, but also, that whether we love or fail to love suffering ensues!! The blunt conclusion that one is to "love to suffer and suffer to love" is a simplistic way of cutting away the nuances and complexities of the relationship between these two realities, while shining a light on a situation that Allen found both funny and absurd. As the young woman says in the clip referred to above, [[Cousin Sonja, I never want to marry. I just want to get divorced!]].

That said, from a Christian perspective, the saying of itself is a distortion of the truth about loving and its relation to suffering. Yes, no question, suffering is intimately related to loving others. To open ourselves to genuine love is also to open ourselves to the pain of compassion, grief, loss, bereavement, having our love unreturned or betrayed, and ultimately, even having it abused and otherwise rejected. Love requires the gift of self, and that self-gift implies vulnerability that entails real sacrifice and pain.  In loving, we open ourselves to suffering and loss, but also to real joy and fulfillment when we choose to live our lives for the other's sake. The greatest image of this interrelatedness of love and suffering for the Christian is the Christ Event. God gives himself to and for us, and the Word is made incarnate in Jesus. Jesus says yes after yes after yes to allowing this incarnational event to be made real in space and time in and through his own life. He gives himself exhaustively for God's sake and the sake of all that is precious to God, right on up to Golgotha and beyond. But none of this equates to the Woody Allen conclusion, "Love to suffer and suffer to love!" (Remember, this movie is a parody, and parodies raise complex realities to a simplistic expression that is absurd! They do this to make us laugh and also to think more deeply and clearly.)

I don't think anything the Scriptures teach us gives the sense that Jesus "loved to suffer" in either the sense that he loved so that he might suffer, or in the sense that suffering was something he loved to do -- the only senses I can see "love to suffer" really bearing in this sentence. Quite the opposite!! Jesus was a highly social man who loved life and celebrated it and the grace of God in every way he knew. I suspect this is why he was labelled a glutton and drunkard (and perhaps something of a party animal) by some highly religious folk! Certainly, however, his love implied or occasioned suffering. It is the case that Jesus' suffering, both throughout his life and in his passion and death, was occasioned by the fact and faithfulness of his love for God and for the whole of God's creation. The idea that we suffer in order to love only makes sense in this way: viz., we accept suffering as an integral part of choosing to love. If, on the other hand, we are saying that suffering necessarily implies we love others, this is a mistake. There is such a thing as masochism, where suffering is a personal imperative, and it has nothing to do with loving oneself or others.

Each of us is to be realistic about love and life. Suffering (or at least a vulnerability to suffering) will be occasioned by both, and certainly by a faithful life of obedience (attentive responsiveness) to God. But so will abundant fruitfulness and joy! Additionally, suffering is the result of sin, not necessarily personal sin, but the state of sin -- the state of estrangement or alienation from God, who is the ground and source of being and meaning. As I have reiterated here over the years, God did not will Jesus' suffering; God willed an abundant and truly human life filled with the love of God and others, and lived for the sake of the Kingdom. God willed that Jesus live this life with integrity, generosity, and compassion, so that God might be Emmanuel (God with us), and so he did!! Jesus suffered (or embraced suffering) because he loved, and he loved despite his suffering, so perhaps this is a better paradigm (or motto) for Christians. It is quite different from the Woody Allen imperative! In any case, the excerpt from the movie clip is included here. I think you can hear the parody in just this small piece of the whole.

Looking Again at Jesus' Suffering and the Notion of Victim Souls

[[Dear Sister Laurel, I really appreciated the piece you put up on suffering effectively -- sorry, witnessing effectively to suffering. I especially liked what you said about a micro drop of skunk scent and how very far it goes. I've been watching and reading a hermit whose approach to suffering is very different than yours. Not only are they always talking about how they suffer (the scent of skunk is overpowering and keeps me from watching the videos), but seems to me they believe that God sends or causes the suffering. I don't know, but even if God has something to teach us it is incomprehensible to me that God is responsible for suffering.  Besides, what I learned was that what God wants to teach us is how much He loves us. Isn't that the answer to every problem or need? So here are my other questions: Do you believe God wanted Jesus to suffer? Do you believe in "victim souls"? Is the hardest thing about being a hermit the suffering one does? If people don't understand this vocation what is the most important thing they fail to understand?]]

Thanks for your comments and questions. They come up (or used to come up) a lot, and of course, the question of Jesus' suffering is central to our faith -- and is most often misunderstood in terms of placating an angry or offended God. In that regard, I have said many times that what God willed was not Jesus' suffering but his openness to letting God be God and his integrity in the face of every trial he faces. I do completely agree with your rhetorical question, [[Isn't that the answer to every problem or need?]] We are called to witness to the Good News and a God who wills for us to suffer or who even causes that suffering is not that!!!

You might look for the posts where I looked at Jesus' prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane and how I understand the conversation that goes on between Jesus and his Abba. There are two links that are recent on this: Jesus' Prayer in Gethsemane and the followup to that, Jesus' Call to Integrity. I believe it all depends on how we imagine God responding to Jesus' hope that surely there is another way to live his vocation besides the path he is looking at immediately. If we imagine God saying, "it must be this way, I need your suffering so I can forgive sin," then I think theologically we are lost. If, on the other hand, we imagine God saying, "Live who you are in this as you have lived that your entire life; live your integrity and I will be with you in anything and everything," then we have begun to understand the theology of the Cross that is at the heart of the Good News upon which our lives and faith depend!!

I have also written on the concept of victim souls, which I believe has become more of a problem in contemporary society than it was in earlier times.  This is because we have become enamored of status of almost any sort at all, and for some, it is their victim status they like to flaunt. Thus, today (I am not speaking of more historic cases) you are apt to find online the self-proclaimed victim soul ensconced in their bed, huddled against their pillows speaking feebly of how God has willed their terrible pain and suffering while gaining additional strength upon speaking of how tormented and persecuted they have been by everyone in their adult lives. Now that video recording is possible, the histrionic quality of some of these portrayals can be captured with fascinating clarity. They may be temporarily seductive to some (like a freeway accident can be to those driving past), and some may be moved by compassion and compelled to try to help or give support; to others, however, as is true for you, the scent of skunk is overpowering, and the whole situation is so theologically disedifying, that one really cannot continue attempting to watch them. I first wrote a long post about this in 2008. Here is the link: Questions on Chronic Illness, Victim Souls, etc.

As you will see, I don't believe in victim souls, particularly not as a divine vocation. I note that the idea of victim souls is not official Catholic teaching but is linked instead to private revelations no one is required to believe. Suffering is, of course, very real and I do believe that chronic illness and disability can be thought of as vocational, though never in terms of God willing the person's suffering. Once we reframe the story of Jesus' suffering in the way we have done above our ability to let go of this destructive (victim soul) theology as well as concepts of reparative theology that sees what Jesus did as objectively inadequate and still requiring victim souls is greatly enhanced. 

Over the years I have watched those few in this time who consider themselves victim souls and despite all their talk of the love of God, I simply cannot shake the sense that their God is a sadist whose cruelty is underscored by a piety rooted in the subject's subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle self-hatred and inability to truly love others. Even more, I have the sense these supposed "victim souls" don't truly think anyone else suffers as significantly as they do --- or as heroically! It is tragic, really, because such persons seem to lack the humility necessary to allow God's redemption. Once we convince ourselves that God causes even our most profound suffering and wills it, we have also limited our capacity to receive God's love as fully as God wills to give it. As I have quoted several times, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said it this way, [[ Not everything that happens is the will of God, but inevitably, nothing that occurs happens outside the will of God!]] In other words, if we begin and end with the love of God even the evil that occurs (and this includes our suffering) can and will be redeemed because God has embraced the whole of our reality in Christ and made it his own.

Your last questions ask about the hardest thing about living as a hermit and what it is important for people to know about this vocation. I am not sure I can give you a single thing that is hardest about this vocation. Some things are hard during some time periods and other things are hard at other times. For instance, the meaningfulness of eremitical life is a major question hermits must come to understand and that understanding is often a struggle. We trust that God has called us to this vocation and the Church has verified that call as best they can; she has consecrated and commissioned us to live and explore it. We have to live into the truth of this and explain to ourselves and sometimes to others as well how it is our lives are meaningful and a gift to the Church and the larger world. 

Sometimes the tedium associated with this life is most difficult as we live our faithfulness in the everyday ordinary things we must do again and again. And again and again. And too, for some of us, the suffering associated with illness or disability can be significant and lonely; it is isolating in a way that militates against the silence of solitude and must be redeemed and transfigured by God's love. Finally, I find the demands of the inner work I do regularly can be very difficult, especially as unexpected depths within me open up and flood my present with pain. Ironically, with this last also come some of the most exhilarating times of grace and Divine victory so as much as I might dislike aspects of it, the work itself is compelling.

The most important thing I think people should know is that this vocation is about personal truth and transparency, living the truth of who one is while becoming ever more transparent to God (because God is a constitutive part of our existence). It is not about escape or quiet relaxation (though relaxation is very real too); it is an intense life that is constantly surprising as God draws one deeper into the Mystery He is. As I said in another post, I want others to understand this is a true (though rare) vocation. It speaks to every person about who they are, the place of God in that, and the importance of letting God be God as the priority of our lives. I think all these things are things people fail to understand about eremitic lives.