Biography
Fr. Edward Foley is a member of the Province of St. Joseph of the Capuchin Order. Fr. Foley is Director of the Ecumenical Doctor of Ministry Program and Professor of Liturgy and Music at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. He’s the author of 14 books and presides and preaches at Ascension Catholic Church in Oak Park, Illinois. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

  We encourage you to purchase Edward Foley books through Amazon.Com 
  which will donate 15% of the purchase price back to the Chicago Sunday Evening Club 
          and 30 Good Minutes.

"Letting God Take Possession of Us" 
A celebrated contemporary proverb is the well known adage stressing the inevitability of death and taxes. Ironically, what that proverb does not admit, but what most people recognize, is that what truly is inevitable is suffering—death and taxes are only two of the more obvious venues for suffering.

Long before anybody struggled with their income tax, the inevitability of suffering was revered as the starting point of one of the world’s great religions. Almost 2,500 years ago there was a prince who lived a sheltered life. According to ancient texts, he left his palace when he was twenty-nine in order to learn more about the world. In four successive journeys, he encountered an old man, a sick person, a corpse, and a holy man. From the first three encounters the prince faced the inevitability of suffering and death. From the fourth he imagined a possible response to this fate. Thus, one night soon after that, the prince secretly abandoned his palace, family and life of privilege. There began a difficult journey. The eventually transformed seeker of truth is now known to his followers as the Buddha.

Across every tribe and continent, untold sages have pondered the dilemma of human suffering. Why are we born if doomed to die? Why does the world taunt us with pleasure and promises of happiness when earthquakes, hurricanes, broken hearts, chemotherapy and cemeteries are in our future? Is human existence the ultimate bad joke?

Many argue that in the face of such inevitable suffering the only response is indulgence. “Eat, drink and be merry,” advised the ancient hedonists, “for tomorrow we die.” There are, however, other voices, suggesting that while suffering is unavoidable, it is not a waste or mockery of human energies.

Rich is the wisdom that suggests that suffering is actually life-giving. One powerful testimony comes from the celebrated astrophysicist Stephen Hawking. For years he has suffered from a motor neuron disease which will eventually take his life. Hawking writes that before he became ill, he was bored with life. After learning about his illness, however, he viewed his existence differently. He wrote, “If I were going to die anyway, it might as well do some good. But I didn't die. In fact, although there was a cloud hanging over my future, I found, to my surprise, that I was enjoying life in the present more than before. I began to make progress with my research, and I got engaged.” Though racked with a debilitating disease, it has not prevented Hawking from having a family, and being one of the most celebrated scientists of the age. Hawking even calls himself “lucky.”

In some ways Hawking’s story is not that unusual. Many are the talented whose treasure only arises out of suffering. One celebrated study of gifted individuals reveals that one similarity across virtually all of their lives is the need to overcome great difficulties—poverty, broken homes, physical handicaps—in order to achieve greatness. I always marvel at Beethoven, who premiered his final symphony to uproarious applause, applause which, like the symphony itself, he never heard because he was deaf. How does a deaf man produce one of the great choral symphonies of all time, and one based on a poem about joy? Can suffering actually be redemptive?

Suffering raises difficult questions for those of us who believe in God. Maybe suffering makes more sense if there wasn’t a God, for then we wouldn’t need satisfying answers to some of religion’s most daunting questions. If there is a God, why does God let us suffer? And why believe in a God who allows suffering, especially of the just, the innocent, and the children?

Christians, like other believers, have long struggled with such questions. One fundamental Christian belief is that suffering has the potential for being redemptive. This belief is rooted in our understanding of Jesus. We believe that God chose to become a human being, like us, and to take on the inevitability of suffering and death. In so doing, we believe that God in Jesus rehearsed the possibility that suffering and death were not inherently meaningless but could be life giving.

Now, some have been taught that suffering is redemptive in the sense that it provides us with some leverage with God; that our suffering helps us win some kind of divine sympathy or eternal life. The opposite, however, seems to be true: we do not suffer in order to take possession of God, but for God to take possession of us. Thus Jesus’ death on the cross was actually the terrible beauty of God taking total possession of the first born while the world looked on.

Of course, suffering alone is not redemptive, but only holds the seeds for redemption. The question that faces each in suffering is, “How we will respond?” We do have a choice—not if, but how we will face our suffering—and we are challenged to ponder whether our suffering will be a centripetal force that progressively closes in on us, or a centrifugal grace that radiates outwards toward others.

The writer Joseph Addison understood that suffering alone was not necessarily redemptive. He wrote, “If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable.”

Similarly, when Jesus says “if any want to become my followers they must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me” he was not equating discipleship with some form of religious masochism. Following Jesus, even through suffering, is grounded in the great commandments, love of God and love of neighbor. Suffering does not exempt us from charity or justice. Rather, like Jesus, our suffering is a critical litmus test that exposes us at our most vulnerable, and queries whether our charity and justice ring true, even now.

New Zealander Michael Lapsley was sent on mission to South Africa in 1973. He was soon expelled, and resided for many years in Zimbabwe, including a time with armed guards because of credible evidence that he was on a governmental hit list. In April 1990 he received a package from South Africa. It was a letter bomb that blew off his hands, blinded him in one eye, and damaged the other. Both eardrums were shattered; he lost his sense of smell. All of his senses were altered. Including, as he himself notes, his sense of mission. Lapsely wrote, “I realized that if I became filled with hatred, self-pity and...revenge, I would remain a victim forever. It would consume me... [but] God and people of faith enabled me to make my bombing redemptive, to bring life out of death... I was enabled to grow in commitment to justice and in compassion... I do grieve and will always grieve, especially for my hands... However,” he writes, “I am no longer a victim, nor even simply a survivor. I am a victor over evil, hatred and death.” Fr. Michael Lapsley is now chaplain to a Trauma Center for victims of Violence and Torture in South Africa.

Our lives may not be as dramatic, but we all have our crosses, the small explosions and destructive events in our lives. Most of us would like them to go away. Maybe we even pray that they will go away; but that may be not the kind of miracle God will work for most of us. And so we struggle to believe, and continue to pray, but maybe in God’s unbounded wisdom our belief and prayer will itself be transformed, for as the poet writes:

We ask for health that we might achieve.
God makes us weak that we might obey.
We ask for riches that we might be happy.
God gives us poverty that we might be wise.
We ask for strength that we might do greater things.
God gives us infirmity that we might do better things.
We ask for all things that we might enjoy life.
God gives us eternal life that we might enjoy all things.
We receive nothing that we asked for yet much more than we hoped for.
Our prayers are answered: we are most blessed.

So for you, in whatever brokenness or hardship faces you, I pray that your prayers as well will be answered, and that you too will be most blessed.

Interview with Edward Foley

Lydia Talbot: Fr. Foley, only a suffering God can help. That seems to be the message. How was that first revealed to you?

Edward Foley: Well, I think like most of God’s revelations, through other people. I mean I actually got a chance to meet Michael Lapsley very briefly. He came to Chicago to speak at a mission conference. But I think when you meet people and, as in my own religious community, living with elderly folk and watching them in their declining years and having them embrace that as a kind of grace, I think that’s always the most touching and influential way.

Daniel Pawlus: You spoke about each of us having a cross to bear. I find that very interesting as a fellow Catholic. What are your thoughts about that? Do we get too caught up in the negative part of that sometimes and not see the grace in that itself or is it a good reminder of gratitude and suffering in general?

Foley: I think it’s a difficulty. Part of it depends on what our religious formation was. I think sometimes we unfortunately communicate the image of a God who is somewhat punitive, a God who is angry, and suffering is some kind of punishment. And I think one of the challenges of religious formation and religious leadership is inviting people to know a kind of God whose first move is love, never pain, and that it’s only a loving God who invites us into a relationship. So it’s only the possibility that love can be revealed and never an angry, demonic kind of God.

Talbot: And love in the suffering, as you point out in your message. That we understand that despite disasters, tragedies, loss, death—God doesn’t prevent these things but that doesn’t mean that God is absent from them. But what do you say to people who just don’t believe that?

Foley: Well, I’m not sure you say anything to somebody who doesn’t believe because I think belief is not about cognitive or compelling reasoning. I think what you do is witness. And witness is what helps us believe and not know because we’re never going to know in this life. So it’s not that we have to convince somebody—because we really can’t. That’s why it’s faith and not knowledge. But I think if we can witness and I think that’s the grace of whatever difficulty each of us has. We all have a soap opera in our lives. That’s why they sell so well! But is that a way for us, is it an excuse to be small-minded and mean? Or what happens when you meet somebody who is suffering and they are so gracious and they are life giving and they are like a Hawking? They say they are lucky. Now that’s phenomenal.

Pawlus: That’s what I found interesting when you cited some examples of people who used suffering to gain new insights and really put themselves in the present with their life. That seems to be one of the gifts, if there is, of suffering—to take it and to digest it in that manner.

Talbot: And the choice that you point out how we will respond when we are facing pain. As a parish priest, Fr. Foley, what is that language of faith? What are those words that you share with a parishioner who’s facing terminal illness or who’s just lost a loved one?

Foley: Well, I think that pastorally, the sharing of faith is also the sharing of doubt because I think if there is too much surety we can have a tendency to idealize and romanticize religion in such a way that it’s really not realistic for folk. And so one of the things that I always say, even on Sunday to folk before we say the creed, before we profess faith, is: “If you believe or if you’d like to believe.” If you want to believe say “I do,” because we’re not always sure. And I think we have an image of a God who understands something about suffering. I mean God didn’t send Jesus so that Jesus suffered and that the Father was ok, because if they are in the Trinity, when the son suffers, the father suffers. So that God has some empathy and God knows about losing a child and God knows about death. That’s the kind of God that I’m drawn to.

Talbot: Are there moments in your own life where you have been sustained by your faith when you faced suffering and pain?

Foley: Well, I think most recently with the death of my father. It was actually a beautiful experience. It was something quite unexpected and he was so gracious in his own dying. At one time I asked him—I was doing my best pastoral work, you know—“Are you angry? Are you upset? Are you disappointed?” And he gave me this grin and he said, talking about my mother, “I wouldn’t be here this long if it wouldn’t have been for her.” So there was only this kind of graciousness.

Talbot: Your father’s name was Jim and you told us earlier that he was your inspiration for your scholarship in music and worship.

Foley: He was the musician in the family so we all tried to catch up!

Pawlus: That’s wonderful. One of the other things you said that struck me was this idea when we’re in suffering we tend to turn in on ourselves. It’s a natural response. And God is really calling us to look outward and connect with him at that time, isn’t he?

Foley: I think at all times in our lives and to connect with others. There was one writer who said that suffering was sort of God’s way of getting our attention. And it is. God chose to be revealed through people, with his son becoming a human being, and so the turning towards God, from my perspective, is always turning toward other folk.

Pawlus: In community.

Foley: In community. In our own loneliness we must know all sorts of other people who are lonely. And we can wait around for them to call us or we can call somebody else. It’s that reaching out, it seems to me, that’s what shows that the mission is alive in Jesus.

Talbot: I’m sure we’ve all known people suffering who are ministering in the midst of their suffering.

Foley: Absolutely.

Talbot: In amazing ways.

Foley: Yes. Sometimes when I go visit somebody who is very ill I sometimes am struck by the wonderment about who is actually doing the pastoral care here! Me or them.

Pawlus: It is very reciprocal in a way. There is something to be gained from it.

Foley: No question.

Pawlus: Well, we thank you so much for sharing your insights and thoughts with us today.

Foley: Thank you.