A Charismatic Learns To Take Up Her Cross

I am rereading a book that I read on my way to becoming Orthodox almost twenty years ago.  The book is Abbess Thaisia: An Autobiography.  It is published by St. Herman Brotherhood Press.  When the Charismatic Protestant community that I was a part of first discovered Holy Orthodoxy, our only contact with the the Orthodox Church was through the books published by the St. Herman Brotherhood—who at that time published books mainly by Fr. Seraphim Rose and by or about pre-Revolutionary Russian monastics.  We were so starved for information about the Holy Orthodox Church that we ordered and read every book they published.  This was our introduction to the Holy Orthodox faith, and for us, it was a pretty good introduction.

Of course we were profoundly ignorant.  We thought, since these books (on or about Russian monastics) were the only exposure we had to the Orthodox faith, we even thought for a while that our whole community would have to become monastic in order to become Orthodox.  Thank God, we finally encountered the Church Herself and, to paraphrase the book of Acts, we were taught the way more perfectly.  Not only did we not have to become celibate to be Orthodox, but we could even be ordained to Holy Orders and stay married: There was great rejoicing in the land.

Abbess Thaisia’s autobiography was one of the first books we read on our way to the Holy Orthodox Church.  It was a particularly helpful book for us because Abbess Thaisia experienced dreams and visions, something we Charismatics thought highly of.  As a community we were used to God “speaking” to us and guiding us both individually and as a community through dreams and visions.  Needless to say, we had a lot to learn about how such phenomena were handled in the Orthodox Church, ways that focus on humility, discernment and repentance rather than on the celebration of the experience.  But that was to come.  For the time being, it was enough of an encouragement for us that within the Holy Orthodox Church, people were seeing visions and having prophetic dreams.  

However, as I am rereading Abbess Thaisia’s autobiography almost twenty years later, I am struck by different things.  I am about a third of the way through the book, and I have been struck  this time by the amount of suffering, caused primarily by misunderstanding, that Mary endured on her way to becoming a nun and in her early years in the monastery.   (Abbess Thaisia’s name in the world was Mary).  Mary, and then later the nun Thaisia, suffered terribly from false accusations due not only to misunderstanding and envy but also due to the misplaced love of her mother.  

Mary only wanted to love God with all of her being, but most others could not understand that.  Consequently, her motives were generally misunderstood: even in the monastery—or perhaps I should say especially in the monastery.  The monastery, like a much more intense version of a local parish, is not only a hospital, it is a crucible.  It is a hospital that heals us sometimes through cauterization.  It is a hospital that heals us through the Cross, through our own crucifixion with Christ on the Cross.  Below is a passage from Abbess Thaisia’s autobiography where she talks about the pain and confusion she experienced during her early years at the monastery as she learned to be crucified with Christ:

The enemy, however, is unable to endure peace among men, and soon enough he made his work felt.  He induced those willing to listen to his insinuations to make venomous calumnies against me, and I, being an innocent victim, began to lose heart.  Those around me were experiencing equally great confusion….

During the time that this storm was about me, I often lost heart.  Not only was this calumny and affliction getting the best of me ([although] I had medicine to cure that: the knowledge that those who want to follow the path of the cross cannot avoid this), but a question kept confusing me: Why are those in authority so short-sighted as to be unable to discern truth from falsehood?  Why are they so quickly inclined to trample down that which, not so long ago, occasioned their tenderness and concern?  Another question also came to my mind: Where can one find the truth when it is absent even in its representatives?  My sorrow was so great that it clouded my reason, and even my ability to clearly understand that our superiors are only ordinary human beings, and that one has no right to demand of them a clairvoyance possessed only by saints.  Nor will I hide the fact [that] because of my great spiritual confusion I lost my zeal for prayer.  When I stood at my icon-corner to pray, one of two things happened: either, having crossed myself, I fell down on the floor with great sobs (at which time the state of my soul was more stifled than prayerful), or a piercing question would keep drilling on my mind—“Where is the truth?  Why does nobody defend the innocent?  Why does nobody console their tears?”  With that, trying not to give way to such despondent thoughts, I would hastily go to bed.  But how could I possibly sleep?….

Finally the storm passed…. But my soul had been profoundly shocked, and it could not be easily calmed.  In place of my former cheerful and happy manner, I became mistrustful, sorrowful, and suspicious.  I could not help but realize (having personally experienced it) that all of this love and kindness could as quickly be changed to wicked and venomous mockery as one hour follows another.  To put it briefly, my former frame of mind had left me.  I even began to avoid my companions, scorning them, while inside I was languishing, asking myself over and over, “If even in a convent there is no sincere love—the cornerstone not only of monasticism, but of Christianity in general—then there is no salvation.  And if there is no salvation, why are we on this earth?  Once, with such thoughts in my head, I fell asleep….

And when Nun Thaisia falls asleep she has a dream through which she comes to understand that unjust suffering was the necessary cross she must experience to enter into the relationship with God that she longed for.  Misunderstanding, false accusation, confusion, calumny: This is the way of the cross for many of us.  

We do not all experience the Cross the same way.  But we all must experience the Cross, we must all “take up our cross and follow Christ.”  For some, the Cross is sickness or injury.  For others, it is mental imbalance of one sort or another: depression, adult ADHD, substance abuse and addiction, codependency issues, cognitive developmental issues.  There are many ways people are challenged “just to be normal.”   And all of these challenges are our cross—the very cross we must take up, we must accept and deal with.  And not only accept and deal with, but follow Christ carrying.  The addict must follow Christ even as he continues to struggle to stay clean.  The one with depression must follow Christ, even as she continues to struggle to turn away from the darkness.  We must all take up our cross and follow Christ.  

But in taking up our Cross and following Christ, we find peace—peace after the storm.  We find a foretaste of the Resurrection to come—even as we are still tasting the bitterness of suffering.  Some of us are even healed and delivered from a Cross.  But then the Crosses only change.  St. John Chrysostom said that when God delivers us from one Cross, it is only that we may learn to carry a heavier one.  Suffering of one kind or another is the lot of every human being.  There is no human life without suffering (How many children of wealthy parents abuse themselves, cut themselves and in other ways drug themselves because they cannot stand the pain of their life of privilege?)  No, there is no human life without suffering.  The only question is: Will you offer you suffering to Christ or not?  Will you turn to Christ in your pain and trust in Him?  Will you wait in the tomb with Christ for the Resurrection?  Or, will you blame others, as our fore-parents did in the Garden of Eden?  Will harbour resentment, nurturing with anger the growing root of bitterness?  What will you do?

That’s the question.  The question is not whether or not we will suffer.  We all suffer, sometimes more intensely, sometimes less intensely at various seasons of our life.  We all have Crosses.  We will all experience confusion and misunderstanding, pain and injustice.  The only question is whether or not we will turn to Christ and find Grace and Love even in our pain, whether or not we will join Christ on the Cross—or like the thief who would only rail against Christ, will we suffer anyway, only to die alone, far from the Grace of God?  This is the question.

Surviving The Valleys

Homily 70

One of the realities of created life in this fallen world is variableness, according to St. Isaac the Syrian.  Variableness is the reality of change, both good and bad. In a sense, you can say that this variableness of life is what mankind chose (and continues to choose) in the Garden of Eden by eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Life as we know it is a varying experience of both good and evil, pleasure and pain, joy and sadness.  Even in our relationship with God, we experience mountain tops and valleys, or what some of the Fathers refer to as the abundance of Grace and the withdrawal of Grace.  

Of course, in a very important sense, abundance and withdrawal of Grace refer our experience. Our experience of abundance and withdrawal of Grace does not mean that God is any less present in our lives. God is present in the abundance of Grace and in the withdrawal. Nonetheless, the mountain tops and valleys of our spiritual life are often quite troubling. Each new valley brings us again to our knees as we wonder if we have made any progress whatsoever in our spiritual life, if we have taken even one step nearer to God. When we are on the mountain top we think we have finally made it, that we have finally acquired a bit of the Grace of God. When we are on the mountain top we rejoice in the ease of prayer, the nearness of peace, and we marvel at the sense of compassion for the whole creation (and even our enemies) that seems to flow through us. That’s the mountain top. 

On the mountain top we don’t want to remember that the valley is coming. We don’t want to remember that everything that seems so easy and the Grace that seems so near now will change. In a little while prayer will be difficult again and Grace will not seem so near. Variation: this is St. Isaac’s word for it. And St. Isaac tells us that variation will be with us until the grave. It is the way of salvation for us in this fallen world. When we don’t realize this, valleys can seem unbearably low—largely because we don’t think we should have to pass through them, because we think something is wrong, because we wrongly thought we had things pretty much figured out, back on the last mountain top (so many months or years ago).   

However, there is a way to level out our experience of the mountains and valleys, the good and the evil of this life.  For St. Isaac, it is called repentance. Repentance keeps us from assuming too much on the mountain tops and from losing prayer and the nearness of God in the valleys.  Repentance for St. Isaac does not refer to a change of behaviour, as we generally think of it. For St. Isaac repentance refers to prayer itself: “continual, intense…prayer filled with compunction.” We repent when we remain in (or return to) prayer.  

Prayer is a habit born of effort (you really do have to make yourself do it) and a continual awareness of the nearness of God (whether you feel it or not) coupled with a continual awareness of your own frailty, or changeability, or variability—what I often refer to as brokenness. Like a broken cup, I cannot hold the Grace God gives me. Like a broken wheel, I cannot continue straight in the path God has set for me. Like a broken record, I can’t stop repeating in my mind what I should have forgotten long ago. And like a spoiled child, I cannot stop thinking about myself: what I like and what will make me happy. My body is continually slipping out of my control, my eyes and ears and appetites wandering where they should not be. My brokenness is so obvious, yet I continually forget that I am broken. I forget that I am broken and so I forget to pray. And in my forgetfulness I think I have things pretty well under control, and my attention wanders everywhere: everything is important and interesting to me except the One Thing Needful. 

This knowledge of my own brokenness is the source of compunction. Compunction literally means “with piercing.”  Compunction is a pain, sometimes literal, or nearly literal, in our heart or mind caused by our awareness of our brokenness—both our own personal brokenness and the brokenness we share with all humanity and that is manifest in the pain and suffering of the world. Compunction with the awareness of the nearness of God (felt or not) leads to intensity of prayer, or what St. Isaac simply calls repentance.  

Repentance, or this way of continual, intense and compunction-filled prayer, is something we need “throughout the twenty-four hours of the night and day” according to St. Isaac. It is prayer that can be expressed in all sorts of prayers. Compunction-filled, intense prayer can be expressed in the Jesus Prayer or some similar prayer as we call out to Christ in our hearts even while we must also be doing other things with our minds and bodies. Compunction-filled, intense prayer can be expressed through akathist hymns or daily prayers. It can be expressed through prayerful attention in matins or vespers and especially in the Divine Liturgy. Compunction-filled, intense prayer can even (and perhaps sometimes best) be expressed through the silent cry of the heart for help and the silent longing of the heart for wholeness, salvation, and deliverance for ourselves and for those we love and for the whole world.  

When we pray with compunction, with the knowledge of our brokenness and the awareness of our changeability, when we pray this way all of the time, then it is easier to stay a little longer on the mountain top without our mind constructing false structures of permanence (like St. Peter on the Mount of Transfiguration trying to make permanent that which was meant to be only a taste, a glimpse into the Age to Come). And when we pray with compunction the valleys are never quite so low, because the comfort promised to those who mourn is near at hand. And the suffering is somehow lessened because the valleys become more familiar to us because we know we have walked this way before and will walk this way again, because the tears of repentance and the pain of compunction no longer surprise us, but are our old friends, our companions on the journey through this transient age and into the Age to Come, into the Age in which all sickness, sorrow and sighing will flee away.

Lord, If You Had Been Here....

Lord, if you had been here…

When Lazarus dies, his sisters, Martha and Mary, are overwhelmed with sadness, confusion and probably not a little anger. A few days before Lazarus’ death, Martha and Mary sent messengers to Jesus telling Him, “Lord, behold, he whom you love is sick.” Martha and Mary reached out to Jesus because they believed in Him. They believed in His love for them and their brother. They believed that Jesus not only could, but would heal their brother; and so they reached out to Jesus. And Jesus heard their cry for help.  He received the message but then waited two days before beginning the two or three day journey to Bethany.

Jesus waited, and Lazarus died.  

For Martha and Mary, Jesus did not show up—not when they needed Him, not when they expected Him, not when they believed he would and should have shown up, not in time to keep their brother Lazarus from dying. For Martha and Mary, Jesus shows up four days too late. So when they do see Jesus the first words out of the mouths of Martha and Mary, the first words they say to him—and they meet him separately, yet say exactly the same thing—their first words to Jesus are a rebuke, their first words are telling Jesus what He did wrong: “Lord,” they say, “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

The Gospels tell us that Lazarus was a friend of Christ.  Mary had poured out costly perfume on Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair. Martha had served meals for Jesus and his disciples. They had seen Jesus heal the sick.  They had seen him heal multitudes of strangers. All who came to Him, He healed. And yet it seemed to Martha and Mary that in their hour of greatest need, their friend Jesus, whom they loved and served, their friend Jesus wouldn’t come and heal their brother. He wouldn’t come on time.  He wouldn’t hurry up. He would just let their brother die.  “Lord, if you had been here,” they cried.

Many devout followers of Christ have had experiences similar to Martha and Mary’s. It seems always to be the devout followers of Christ who suffer the most. Of course death—in all of its forms: sudden loss of life; slow, lingering illness; dementia; moral failure; betrayal; misunderstanding; irrational hatred; sudden poverty—death in all of its forms brings suffering and sorrow to everyone and anyone it touches. However, for those who believe, for those who believe in the God who does wonders, those who believe in miracles, who know that God can do whatever He pleases, for these there is a unique kind of suffering associated with deaths. “Lord,” we cry, “where are you?”  “Lord, if you had been here….” For those who believe, deaths are often accompanied by a strong sense of the absence of God.

This is not always the experience of devout believers. That is, many devout believers have experienced a profound sense of the nearness of God in the face of deaths of various kinds. I, too, have experienced this inexplicable comfort in the face of tragedy. Yet I have also tasted of the deeply troubling sorrow of Martha and Mary. This is a sorrow compounded by sorrow. Not only is there the loss and pain of death with its myriad of manifestations, but there is the loss or failure of faith. God has not done what you believed, what you knew so confidently, He would do.  “I did my part—what more could I have done?” We wrack our brains: “What is it? What is it? Surely, I can’t have been so wrong. Have I offended God? Have I made a mistake?  God, what did I do wrong?! Lord, where are you?! Lord, if you had been here….”

When Martha confronts Jesus, she enters into dialog, into a kind of negotiation: “But even now,” she says, “I know that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” But Jesus redirects her attention toward the resurrection. Martha imagines only the future: “Yes, yes, someday, at the end of the world, my brother will rise again.” But Jesus corrects her, corrects both her tense and her understanding of what (or rather who) resurrection is: “I am the resurrection and the life….”

Mary, on the other hand, when she confronts Jesus, is different. After her initial words, “Lord, if you had been here…” Mary only weeps. She has no more words. Mary weeps and those who are with her weep and Jesus weeps.

We know from the Gospel that Jesus does raise Lazarus from the dead. The hymns of the Church teach us that this is to be understood as a confirmation of the universal resurrection. In Christ, everyone and everything is raised, even though in time this may yet be a future event. Christ is the resurrection and the life, even though we still must pass through time, through the confused words of Martha and the tears of Mary, through what the Psalmist calls the Valley of Tears.

I have a german shepherd who loves to go for walks.  She walks on leash very well—so long as she doesn’t think she knows where we are going. Once she thinks she knows, then she starts to pull on the lead. Then I have to change direction. I have to train her to pay attention to me, not to where she thinks we are going.

Jesus invites us to walk with Him. He amazes us with His signs and wonders, with His love and with the experience of His nearness. Yet instead of paying attention to Him, we strain our focus to where we think God is going. We have visions and dreams that we are sure are His, that we are sure are pointing us to where God is going. We deduce principles and guidelines. We teach others where we think God is going (and how to help God get there). We begin to interpret every drop of Grace as a sign confirming what we think we already know—rather than as a sign pointing back to the Giver, as a sign calling us to attend to our Master.

And then the inevitable happens. Death surprises us.  Failure sneaks up on us. People disappoint us. Illness attacks us. A temptation overwhelms us. The dream fades, the vision crumbles. “Lord, if you had been here….” But the Lord is where He has always been—in our hearts. Our attention, however, has wandered. Like my energetic german shepherd, my attention has strained to where I thought we were going, and I have stopped paying attention to my Master, to my heart, to the place where my Master abides. Some of us, the wise (I suppose) weep. There are no words. Some of us, like Mary, have no words and only weep. Some of us, like me, will have to argue a little, will have to pull at the leash until in brokenness we too run out of words and collapse in tears at Jesus’ feet: “A broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”

The earliest Christians referred to our faith as “the Way.”  The Way refers not to a particular path we may walk or a particular place we are going, but to a particular way we walk whatever path we find ourselves on. We walk in this Valley of Tears with our attention not on the destination or even on the road, we walk with our attention on the One who abides in our hearts by faith. Yes, there are paths and there are destinations and there are things we do in life—but none of this is where our attention belongs. In fact, it has been said by many that it is the very unpredictability, the very disappointing and confusing nature of our walk through this world that forces us to attend to “the one thing that is needful.”  

Some of us, the more stiff necked (I suppose), may need more disappointment to turn our gaze away from what is outside us, to teach us to see within us what cannot be seen outside us. Jesus is the resurrection—even when death seems to be winning. Jesus is the resurrection—even when our loved ones don’t understand. Jesus is the resurrection—even when the Church seems deeply broken.  Jesus is the resurrection and the life. When we believe in Him, though we die (and die we will) yet we shall live. And as we live and believe in Him, we shall never die. A divine mystery: We believe and we die and we live and we believe and we never die. It is a mystery only known in the heart, where Christ lives, where both life and death teach us to focus our attention.

Following In Christ's Steps

Immediately after the Apostle Peter recognizes Jesus as the Christ (something revealed to him from heaven), Peter rebukes Jesus for saying that He must be rejected and killed, (something inspired in Peter by satan).  Even the Apostle Peter, even immediately after a heavenly revelation, could not accept that the way we enter into the Father’s Glory, the way we experience the Resurrection, is through suffering and death.  Jesus, however, assures us that it is the way.  We see the Kingdom of God coming in power by taking up our cross and following Christ (Mark 8:27-9:1).

I am so like Peter.  I am sure that there is another way, another way to enter into Glory, a way other than asceticism, a way other than suffering, a way other than the Cross.  But Jesus tells us that there is no other way.

Asceticism and suffering are ubiquitous.  Life on the earth is often referred to as a valley of tears because suffering is universal.  Atheists, Moslems, Christians, agnostics, Jews… It doesn’t matter.  Everyone suffers.  What then is the difference?  What is this mystery that transforms suffering into Glory and Resurrection?  

Essential in the Christian understanding of Christ’s suffering is the fact that He suffered voluntarily.  That Christ could have said no, that Christ could have called twelve legions of angels, that Christ prayed, “nevertheless, not my will but Yours be done”: these facts are evidence of the voluntary nature of Christ’s suffering.  Moreover, Jesus Himself said, “No one takes my life from me. I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10: 17-18).  And that Christ’s suffering is voluntary grants us some insight into this mystery of the transformation of suffering into Glory and death into Resurrection.

After all, Jesus does say, “Whoever desires to come after me, let him deny himself.”  To follow Christ is something one desires, it is something one chooses, again and again, day by day, moment after moment.

However entering the Father’s Glory is not merely a matter of self-imposed suffering, or suffering for suffering sake.  The suffering that leads to Resurrection is not ego driven.  It is a suffering that is voluntary, or that can become voluntary, but is not a suffering that is self chosen.  Fasting or alms giving are examples of voluntary suffering.  However, so that they may not be self chosen, the Church teaches us when and how to fast, to pray and to give.  We have spiritual fathers and mothers who guide us in asceticism so that our asceticism is not ego driven.  This is one way voluntary suffering (asceticism) is kept from becoming ego driven. 

Illness and oppression are other ways suffering is not (usually) self chosen.  They are examples of suffering that are unavoidable, yet can become voluntary.  When someone is suffering from illness or oppressive circumstances beyond his or her control, suffering is unavoidable and generally not ego driven; but the fact that it can’t be avoided does not mean that it cannot also become voluntary.  

What is voluntary is according to our will.  What is unavoidable can also become voluntary when we receive it from the Hand of God and offer it back to God.  When our whole life becomes an offering to God, then good and bad, pain and joy, peace and disturbance can all become a voluntary offering to God.  It does not matter who or what the visible agents of our suffering are.  In the case of Our Lord, it was a corrupt Roman judge, an envious religious leadership, and the harsh sentence of execution at the hands of rough and jeering soldiers.  But for Jesus, the voluntary nature of his Passion was settled in the Garden.  The Cup was from His Father’s Hand.  Whoever the visible agents of His passion were, Jesus saw only the will of His Father. His life and sufferings are an offering of love.  He entrusted his life to His Father even unto death, a terrible death on the Cross.  And the result? Resurrection and salvation for the world.

Similarly, we too can learn to turn our unavoidable suffering into an offering.  Like Jesus, the visible agents do not have to be primary to us.  The virus, the malformed limbs or organs, the uncontrollable movements of body or mind, and the friends and family that fail us: these are merely the agents, the agents of our crucifixion.  And though we cannot call 12 legions of angels, God can, but God doesn’t--or at least God doesn’t send us the angels we expect, the ones that will significantly alter our circumstance. But that doesn’t mean that there are no angels with us, helping, saving us in the midst of the our terrible circumstance.

Pain (physical and psychological) doesn’t always subside, broken relationships don’t always mend, circumstances do not always improve.  Suffering is unavoidable.  Yet we still have will.  We still can offer our lives, our whole life, our pain, our disappointment, and our suffering to God.  What is unavoidable can be made a voluntary offering to God.

And what is the result?  I suggest that the result is the same.  The same loving Father of our Lord Jesus is our loving Father.  Didn’t Jesus teach us to pray, “Our Father…?” The same Power that raised Jesus from the dead and grants life to the world works today, right now, in us.  Didn’t Jesus send the Holy Spirit?  And didn’t St. Peter, the same St. Peter from the Gospels, at the end of his life write, “For to this you were called, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that you should follow in his steps” (1 Peter 2:21)?

Tribulation: The Door of the Kingdom

In the Epistle reading for today, we read that Sts. Paul and Barnabas, after preaching the Gospel in Lystra, visited the churches they had founded on their way home to Antioch: "Strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith."  And what do you think they said to strengthen the disciples (the believers) and to exhort them to continue in the faith?  What would encourage us to continue in the faith?  What would we need to hear that would strengthen us?

Sts. Paul and Barnabas were saying, "We must through many tribulations enter the Kingdom of God."

Why is it that somehow this does not seem very encouraging or strengthening to me?

Perhaps it doesn't sound encouraging or strengthening to me because I don't suffer many tribulations.  Perhaps it is because the few tribulations I do suffer, I suffer poorly, with complaining, assuming that God should have something better for me.  

But if I were a peasant or slave or soldier in first century Lystra, Iconium or Antioch, life would be nothing but tribulation.  I would seldom get what I wanted.  I would generally have no choice.  And tribulation would not be mere metaphor--I would actually experience beatings for failing to live up to the expectations of my lord or commander.  So to the disciples that Sts. Paul and Barnabas were strengthening and encouraging, these words would have great meaning: "Through your relationship with Christ, the tribulations that you are already suffering in life can become the very means of your entering the Kingdom of God."

But what about us?  Is it possible for someone who suffers a little as I do to enter the Kingdom of God?

I don't know.  But I do have two strategies.

My first strategy is to make the most of the little inconveniences I do experience.  When I have a headache, when things aren't going my way, when what I have done or said is misunderstood, and when others are annoying me, when such things happen I try to look immediately to Christ.  I try not to complain, but rather to absorb the little tribulation into my heart, to accept it, not to defend myself, not to spread the misery, but rather to offer my little pain to God as an offering on behalf of the whole world.  

I say "I try."  I seldom succeed very well and I often forget completely.  But sometimes I can remember, and sometimes I do experience a little bit of closeness with God, a little bit of compassion for those around me, for those who unknowingly are the immediate source of my discomfort.

My second strategy is to open my heart to those who are in tribulation.  You have to be careful with this, however.  When we "bear one another's burdens," we bear them to Christ.  We offer them to Christ.  Sometimes, either through personal weakness or an overactive imagination or some other mechanism (guilt, pride, ignorance, not enough sleep, etc.), sometimes I can be overwhelmed with the pain of others.  Or sometimes it is not so much their pain that I am feeling, but my own (again, through guilt or pride or my expectations or even anger with myself or with others whom I think should know better).  You have to be careful.

Nonetheless, there is a way you can share in the tribulations of others.  The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews tell us that enduring a great struggle with sufferings can be partly due to reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming companions of those so treated (Heb. 10: 32, 33).  We can become companions of those who suffer.  When we open our hearts, we can share the pain of others.  This sharing is indeed a kind of holding in common (koinos in Greek).  And in sharing and bearing and holding before the Lord the pain for and of the other whom we hold in our hearts, in some small way we help our "companions" and in some small way enter the Kingdom of God with them.

And, of course, one of the ways we know that the love and suffering in our hearts is real is that it manifests itself in small and generally secret acts of kindness, generousity, patience and service.  The evidence of genuine love, St. James tells us, is to do something, something that hurts a little, something that relieves another and actually costs me something.  Prayer, fasting and alms giving.  We offer suffering in our heart to God (prayer), we do something for another (alms giving), and it hurts a little (fasting).  This is the way into the Kingdom of God.  It is the way of love, the way of bearing one another's burdens.  It is the way of participating in the tribulations that help us enter the Kingdom of God.

What is worth living for ? A response

You have really asked the fundamental question: What is worth living for? You are right that an external constraint to be good only proves to be a burden that eventually produces some form of mental illness either because of guilt because you ignore the “rules” or fundamentalistic self-righteousness and condemnation of others because you deceive yourself into thinking that you are keeping the “rules.” Why bother? Of course, libertinism only produces more suffering. Suffering is a symptom of our sickness and of the sickness we impose on each other and the world. Suicide may take us out of this world, but it doesn’t change us. At least from an Orthodox perspective, heaven and hell are ways to experience existence, and you don’t have to die to begin experiencing either. I know people whose life is hell and I know a few who already taste heaven. As for me, I experience hellish periods (some last moments, some days); but I smell, sometimes, the roses of heaven, and I try to follow that fragrance.
I think the problem lies in a religious milieu that tends to posit knowledge of God as either emotional high or as ridged conformity to rules. This of course is no one’s dogma, but it is the experience and practice of many, many Christians of all stripes. Finding God, if you really find and know Him, makes suffering through life worth it: suffering has meaning in Christ. The problem is how to find, really find, Christ and know Him.
Genuine life in Christ is full of paradox. I think it begins with hope, even the faintest wish that the Creator cares about me. But this care is not like the Baalim, the gods of the world, who in exchange for sacrifices and offerings of various types promise material happiness and power. This care is rather that of a conscientious doctor who desires to heal the patient, not pander to the patient’s delusions. We are very confused children, sick in our minds and hearts; and if we can begin in hope to trust the Physician—because like physiotherapy the healing process is somewhat painful—the small “deaths” we experience through forgiving ourselves and others and turning away from ways that we hurt others begins to produce a kind of resurrection in our minds and hearts. There are no rules outside our heart, but then again our hearts are sick. We need guidance, a spiritual mother or father to help us along the way. But we live in a day in which reliable spiritual fathers and mothers are rare, and most of us stubble along through trial and error, gleaning bits of wisdom from wise people here and there.
And yet hope shines like a little light in a very dark room. We take small steps toward the Light, toward the True, the Beautiful, the Simple. Along the way we learn about ourselves, how sick we really are, what’s real and what’s delusion, what’s love and what isn’t. And part of the paradox is that the less we care about our healing and health, the more clearly we see ourselves and act and think in healthy ways. The more we look at ourselves, the less we see and the more deluded we become. And so we look to a model outside ourselves: “Looking to Jesus, the Author and finisher of our faith.” I’m not talking about the Jesus of Sunday School and of nine year olds. I’m talking about the Jesus who entered the insane world of a woman who had had five husbands. The Jesus who touched the raving maniac and calmed him. The Jesus who called religious hypocrites vipers and white-washed tombs.