Sometimes it is hard to tell sickness from health. When we’re suffering, is it an indication that there’s something wrong with us or might it be that the suffering is the healthy result of living faithfully? When we are anxious, are worrying God’s kingdom into birth or are we simply worrying ourselves to death? Suffering is complex and ambiguous. Here’s an example.
Henri Nouwen, one of our generation’s most renowned and respected spiritual guides was, as he shared so honestly in his writings, a complex and often tortured individual. He was a saint, but one who struggled mightily at times to keep his life true to his commitments and his vows. His commitment was solid, but his emotions were not.
He was a Roman Catholic priest, vowed to celibacy, but prone to fall in love at times. In one such instance, he fell in love obsessively. Having a vow of celibacy, recognizing that this relationship could never include the special intimacy he craved, and getting a clear signal from the other that the obsession wasn’t mutual, he fell into a depression which landed him in a clinic for a number of months. Eventually he regained his health and balance, and from that new space, wrote The Return of the Prodigal Son, his signature book which has become a spiritual classic.
Most of the commentaries on Nouwen’s life treat this incident as a pathology, as a period in his life where he was not healthy, as certain downfall from grace. They point to a number of things that seemingly indicate this: He was gay and had fallen in love with a heterosexual man who did not have romantic feelings toward him; his seminary training had ill-prepared him for the experience of falling in love in this way; he was by temperament an emotionally complex and often times tortured individual; and there are questions about how healthy his relationship with his mother was as he was growing up.
All of these factors no doubt played a role in his depression; but, looked at more deeply, this incident can be viewed in a very different way, that is, not as a pathology, a sickness, or an immaturity (albeit these are always a factor for all of us), but rather as a crisis that ultimately gives profound witness to Nouwen’s deep spiritual health, to his fidelity to the Gospel, to his commitments, and to his willingness to, like Jesus, sweat blood in Gethsemane.
Whatever else, Nouwen accepted this crushing pain in his life with honesty and integrity and, like Jesus, accepted to be personally broken rather than to break his vows.
That’s the deep challenge, one given to us by Jesus and one that was given to me and my siblings by my dad, who would tell us: “Unless you’re willing to sweat blood, you will not be able to keep your commitments.” Jesus tells us the same thing and we see that he had to precisely do that, sweat blood to remain faithful to his mission. Moreover, it is significant to note where he sweated blood, namely, in a “garden”.
In both Old and New Testaments, the word “garden” does not refer to a place to grow vegetables. Biblically, the “Garden” is the place of love; it’s where lovers go. Note that Jesus doesn’t sweat blood in the temple, or on a mountain, or in a boat on the sea. Rather, he sweats blood in a garden, the place of love,as one whose heart is breaking in love. Henri Nouwen sweated blood in a clinic, as one whose heart was breaking. That clinic was his “garden”, his Gethsemane, the place where he was undergoing paschal transformation more so than succumbing to an illness.
Whatever his weaknesses, his temptations, his emotional crises, Nouwen always shared these openly and with a disarming honesty. For all his complexities and the seeming contradictions in his life, he was always transparent, almost in a childlike manner. He kept little under the surface. Moreover, the argument that this crisis was ultimately a healthy experience for him can be based too on the fruits it bore in his life.
By their fruits you will know them!
Henri Nouwen, despite his immense popularity, struggled his entire adult life to simply receive love and to believe that he was lovable. He was changed radically by undergoing this breakdown. After leaving the clinic and returning to his normal life, he had for the rest of his life an abiding sense of being loved and of being lovable. Out of that transformed space he wrote his spiritual masterpiece, The Return of the Prodigal Son, which has helped thousands of us to receive love more deeply and accept that we are (despite our haunting congenital doubts to the contrary) lovable.
Sometimes it’s hard to tell when suffering is a sign of sickness or of fidelity. However, it’s usually a sign of fidelity, when, like Nouwen, we accept to be personally broken rather than break our vows.