In presenting ourselves before God and feeling in ourselves a bit of the suffering of those whom we know, and simply bringing this pain to God for him to do with it as he wills and as he sees fit, there is a mistake that I’m partial to.

When we love, we naturally feel some of the temporal and spiritual pain of those whom we love. We couldn’t love unless we had compassion! We couldn’t love unless we suffered with the one we love!*

But, at the same time, if we love with a sense, however slight and obscure, of attachment, then we might feel in ourselves (especially physically, in our body) too much of their pain.** We were never made to be so indissolubly linked to another. We cannot take on all of someone’s pain without damaging our own body and the vital link between a soul of charity and a transformed body. If we were debilitated by any one person’s pain and suffering, how could we remain open to others? how could we see Jesus in others? how could we be contemplatives in the mud?

It wouldn’t be possible. Suffering would (then) eclipse our “function”. And our “function” as contemplatives in Christ’s Body is more important than any particular attachment and any particular prayer, however much motivated by love of our neighbour.

As I say, this is a mistake that I fall into. I feel too much. I attach too much. I sometimes suffer too much – if such words have any meaning.

Thankfully, it is a mistake of enthusiasm and disequilibrium. It’s a mistake that can be made because one is trying to go down the right road. It’s not a mistake to despair over. We just need to catch the mistake as it begins. We just need to notice the attachment, and adjust it into a deep, generous love, rather than a too-particular love. We just need to pick ourselves up and say, “Jesus, you know how much I am supposed to suffer someone else’s pain in my body and my soul. I don’t know. You know. Fix my focus. Make me useful to the person that I love and also to everyone else. I, meanwhile, will just focus on your will, pray, and bring my friend’s situation to you.”

And Jesus, with Little Văn, lets us also change suffering into joy.

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* Although in Buddhism, detachment is typically interpreted to mean or lead to an end to suffering, in Christianity this is not necessarily true. Christ was detached. Christ suffered. It seems to be the lot of the saints: detachment but also suffering.

** In this, Christianity and the teachings of the Buddha are in complete agreement.