When you tell me your sufferings, I suffer. Shared pain becomes lighter, and personal sufferings become more real than world upheavals. Today I received a very painful email, and I’m reviewing my own feelings around it.

Three approaches to suffering: the past, the future, the present. The past is the oriental karma. I suffer because of something I did in the past which has to be made up for before I can reach salvation. The good point is that I know I’m thus getting closer to the happy end; the bad point is that I’m suffering for something which I have no idea at all what it can have been.

The future is the western approach. God tests us on earth so that we may merit heaven. When I was young I used to preach that, just as I would ask the best students the toughest questions so as to give them higher marks in their exams, so, the greater sufferings God sends us, the more he shows he appreciates us and wants to reward us. Very clever of me, young priest that I was, but I wouldn’t repeat that sermon before anyone suffering.

The approach of the present bids me to take things as they come to me without asking why. And then going ahead. To do all that is in my hand to relieve suffering; and then to accept what I cannot remedy. “What shakes people is not the facts, but their own reaction to the facts.” (Epictetus) He who holds on, wins.

And always to stand by those who suffer.