What I notice about my own reflection on these scriptures, the Franciscan tradition and the writings of Simone Weil, is the paradox of affliction and hope.  Job, Lazarus, Paul writing to the Corinthians, and even Simone Weil, all are able to point to hope – not because they see it or sense it – but because they stayed turned towards God. Job never finds an answer, but he finds God. Martha and Mary do not receive an answer as to why God allows death with such power in the world, but they do discover who suffers with them. Simone Weil deeply enters her own affliction and the sufferings she saw in Europe from the Spanish Civil War to World War II. What she discovered, even as an agnostic Jew, was the love of God centered upon the cross of Jesus. She found hope in the world even as her world collapsed.

Each of them passed through affliction to reach the paradox. The affliction does not seem to go away. What is key is what happens at the boundary. Do you curse God and die? Do you despair? Do you stop loving and so fall into “something almost equivalent to hell?” Do we turn away and risk becoming “utterly weighed down beyond our strength, so that we despaired even of life?” By not turning away from God – there discovering the love of God – they were all able to encounter hope at the boundary of what they were not able to comprehend. No one got answers. But they all have hope.

And in a strange bit of Franciscan optimism, Bonaventure holds out that even the unafflicted life should lead to the same place – to the center of the universe where one encounters Christ crucified. It seems to me that Weil adds insight to Bonaventure that makes sure Franciscan optimism does not leave one standing far from the cross with an idealized piety. Rather, Simone’s writings highlight that a true reading of Bonaventure is to draw so close to the center that the nail is driven into your soul.

How does one explain the need to live more fully in the paradox of affliction and hope?  That our shared Christian tradition holds out the hope that deeper within the affliction lies the Christ who suffers with them; that inside the affliction lays an horizon of confidence and streams of divine love?

When I look at our tradition and my own experience, I am not sure there is much to say or do for the truly afflicted..  No one was much help to Job.  He endured long enough to discover God, to discover that God never was absent, but only seemed to be.  Mary, Martha and Jesus all suffered together – only a miracle restored them, and only for a while at that.  Was it that experience of death that helped Jesus to remain forever turned towards the Cross, “obedient even unto death” (Phil 2:8).  Scripture leaves us to wonder how these people were able to stand at the boundary of their “whys” – and yet each remained and each discovered a deeper relationship with God, one that began to make the whole and complete in ways they never expected.

The plaintive “why” has no answer.  There are no words or actions which can satisfy. All we can do is remain in the moment with them. The ministry of presence becomes the prime directive by which we hope that our presence can somehow unveil that which is already there.  That which always and everywhere precedes the suffering or affliction – the presence of the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit who is the love of God poured forth into our hearts (cf. 1 Cor 1:20).  Our tradition and scripture tells us that if like Job, we continue to love, if we remain turned toward God, we will meet Christ crucified.  At least there we can answer the question of who suffers affliction with us. There the afflicted can join with Christ to cry out “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” – standing at a horizon of confidence and praise that is no less tolerable, but is nonetheless hopeful.

How can we help the afflicted to know the paradox of affliction has an element of hope, that even when love seems distant and unimaginable, what awaits them at the foot of the Cross is divine love.  Here, Weil’s words ring loudly

“The soul does not love like a creature with created love. The love within it is divine, uncreated; for it is the love of God for God that is passing through it. God alone is capable of loving God. We can only consent to give up our own feelings so as to allow free passage in our soul for this love. That is the meaning of denying oneself. We are created for this consent, and for this alone.”

Fate has not always been kind to the afflicted.

Wanting a happy ending is not a bad thing; only an idealized thing. Even as we are present to the afflicted ones, pointing them to the Cross and the love of Christ, we need to remind ourselves to believe this is enough. This is what is ours to do – remain in the paradox of affliction and Hope.