Today’s memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows — that is our Lady’s spiritual martyrdom, as St. Bernard writes — brings back to mind a theme I have been pondering for many months.
The deacon’s relationship with suffering seems central to his spirituality, if he is living an integrated diaconal life. It is a suffering that differs in many ways from the suffering of his brothers in Orders, i.e., priests and bishops. It is a silent suffering in the shadows. It is a suffering of witness, of testimony, almost a kind of vicarious suffering.
Those of us involved with caring for the marginalized in our society know what I am talking about, because inevitably we are caught in the interface between the suffering poor and the powers to be, both civil and ecclesial. There is great suffering there for the deacon. The efforts a deacon makes to bring those people to the altar as a gift to be sanctified by the priest is an effort requiring great courage perhaps even martyrdom, as St. Lawrence the deacon found out.
Our Blessed Mother suffered a spiritual martrydom as she stood by the cross, powerless to intervene for her Son, and it was her beating heart that spiritually was pierced with the lance that was thrust into the side of our Lord.
I will write more at a later date about the Theology of Suffering and the deacon’s experience of it.
