Recently a friend of mine said something to me that was an epiphany. She reflected, “I don’t know anything about suffering being redemptive without others’ suffering being open to me.”

This immediately struck a chord and resonated within me profoundly.

Sometimes we need a friend to speak the truths we’ve known all along with the credibility of living witness.

In Spe Salvi, Pope Benedict XVI explains the way in which suffering that is shared becomes transformed:

Indeed, to accept the “other” who suffers, means that I take up his suffering in such a way that it becomes mine also. Because it has now become a shared suffering, though, in which another person is present, this suffering is penetrated by the light of love. The Latin word con-solatio, “consolation”, expresses this beautifully. It suggests being with the other in his solitude, so that it ceases to be solitude. 

Something else that comes to mind in thinking about this is the line from the Anima Christi prayer which says: “Within your wounds hide me.”

What is it to be hidden within another’s wounds?

How can a loved one’s wounds actually be a shelter for us?

Have we considered the ways in which a wound creates the actual space for greater openness and depth?

Without attempting to justify any evil, hurt, or injustice, how can revealing our woundedness to others create the hospitality in us for others in their woundedness such that “suffering is penetrated by the light of love”?