Pain occupies us completely.

Pain gathers everything onto itself.

It allows no distance.

It allows no forgetting.

The fear of pain weighs on us more than the pain itself. We know, however, that fear also removes pain. We rid ourselves of one pain with another, greater pain. Epicurus dispelled fear – above all that fundamental, greatest fear, the fear of all fears, the fear of death – through a mental operation by which we and our death never meet. While we exist, Epicurus said, there is no death, and when death comes, we no longer exist.

Nothing steals our attention so powerfully as pain. Pain deepens, sharpens, changes our relationship with the world.  When we fall ill, our world is no longer the same. The space in which we live narrows and changes its meaning. Pain takes from us the space of life’s movement. The people with whom we shared work and life are no longer there. There is no longer the practised rhythm of work, rest, socialising, sport, sleep. The experience of pain is an entirely new experience of the world, a different view of the world. With the appearance of pain, the world appears in a different way. Pain changes and intensifies our experience of the world and of reality. The fundamental common feature of very different experiences of suffering is the compulsion to take on something unpleasant, painful, destructive.

We present an article by Fr Ante Vučković published in the theological journal Crkva u svijetu and parts of an interview in Glas koncila on pain, its meaning and significance for our lives.

Pain cannot be learned. Pain is tasted. Pain, first and above all, is endured. Pain first of all hurts. Nothing steals our attention so powerfully as pain. Pain does not point to something else but gathers everything onto itself. It gathers our strength, our composure. It does not allow us to think of anything else. Forcing our attention onto itself, the experience of pain changes our habitual picture of the world. The experience of pain changes our knowledge of the world and our way of life at their very foundation. Pain deepens, sharpens, changes our relationship with the world.  When we fall ill, our world is no longer the same. The space in which we live narrows and changes its meaning. Pain takes from us the space of life’s movement. The people with whom we shared work and life are no longer there. Suffering then isolates, separates us from others, makes us lonely. Not only because it is impossible to convey our suffering to another, but above all because pain raises a wall between the one weighed down by it and everyone else. The impossibility of communication. How can I put my pain into words for another? How can I make another understand me? And even if they understand me, what does that amount to in relation to the pain I am bearing? The wall is not only the wall of our powerlessness to express our own pain, but above all the wall of difference between the one who suffers and the one who feels no pain. Pain puts everything in question, and pain demands an answer.

Pain changes the rhythm of life. There is no more getting up, working, sleeping. The bed in which we slept at night so that we could live by day suddenly becomes a permanent dwelling place. It no longer serves sleep. It serves the enduring of pain. Thus the bed is transformed from a place of rest into a place of suffering.

Pain shows us things in a new light and a new meaning. Fine weather, rainy weather, sunrise or sunset, food and drink, work and leisure change their meaning. Pain is very personal. The experience of pain is individual. Singular. Sometimes it is so individual that it raises a wall of silence between the one afflicted and everyone else. Pain seems impossible to put into words. It takes away our speech. It erases the horizon of meaning. Such pain strips those who surround the afflicted person of every capacity to console. The afflicted cannot express their pain, and those who are concerned cannot console them, because the wall of muteness that pain has raised between them does not allow understanding, an exchange of experience, or words of comfort. Pain casts the individual out of the world and out of relationships. In the midst of the care that usually gathers quickly around the one who suffers, they nevertheless remain alone, cut off from everyone and from the whole world they were used to.

Pain separates. It drives the sufferer into solitude, into silence or into a cry. A cry and silence are perhaps the last ways in which pain expresses itself. In any case, pain takes away speech. That is why it becomes possible to speak about pain only once it has passed, or once its sharpness and intensity have lessened, once consciousness regains the possibility of distance from the pain. This is why we have far more testimonies about pain that has been overcome than accounts of pain from within pain itself. Yet pain, despite the fact that it separates, also connects. Between the sufferer and those close to them, bonds exist. Again and again we learn from patients who emerge from a severe state of pain how much ordinary words meant to them. At the moment they were spoken, those words seemed unimportant, weak, pale, even superfluous. Later, however, we learn that they reached through the wall of pain into consciousness and touched the emotional side, instilling strength, awakening trust, strengthening hope of emerging from the pain. Words that come from someone the sick person trusts carry exceptional power. These can be the words of a doctor who knows how to describe the patient’s condition well, to foresee what will happen to them next, and to announce the changes for which the patient longs. Knowledge about the illness brings relief. The mere fact that someone understands the illness and grasps what the pain is doing takes from the pain its absolute power.

Pain forces upon us questions of why. Why pain? Why me? Is there any fault in me? Who is responsible for my pain? Even if such great questions of life are not imposed on us, pain still demands that we understand it in some way. It demands that we interpret it. We feel that pain is universal and that it can strike us in a way similar to how it strikes others. We endure pain and we interpret pain. Pain forces upon us questions of why. Without interpretation, pain remains alone, without meaning, meaningless. Pain itself gives no answer to our questions about its meaning. If there is any meaning in pain, it is not to be found within it. Meaning for pain can come only from outside. It is possible to find a framework within which pain acquires meaning.

Pain that is known and foreseeable is no longer the sole and final force that rules over the sick person. There is knowledge about it, and that knowledge will take away its power. The words that take power away from pain can be the words of someone who is emotionally close. Closeness is expressed through words and through touch. The words need not be words of knowledge. They can be words of closeness. Ordinary, everyday words, but words that, within a relationship of closeness, mean more, and mean something different, than their usual meaning. A human relationship of closeness changes the meaning of words. Even more than the word itself, its tone, the manner in which it is spoken, its emotional glow, manage to break through the muteness of pain and the sufferer’s separation from the world and from relationships. Whoever is close to the sick person is drawn into their pain. Not only into theirs, but somewhere in their own depths they also encounter their own possible pain. They observe the sick person, but cannot help noticing that another’s pain could also be their own. Thus pain not only separates, it also creates solidarity.

Pain can be understood as a school. This, of course, is only possible if the sick person decides to make sense of their experience of enduring pain as a school of life. In that case, pain can teach them a great deal: the fragility of life, its transience, the frailty of health, powerlessness.

The sick person can come to discover the preciousness of health, of other people, of knowledge, of the senses, of ordinary everyday things. More than other people, and more than anyone else’s experience, our own experience of pain brings us to our limits. It opens up the horizon of a possible end, announces death, and in the light of fragility reveals the preciousness of things and relationships that had not until then been seen in such a light.

Whoever places their experience of pain within the framework of a school of life can learn  a great deal about themselves, about the world and about other people. Indeed, once the experience of pain is transformed into a school of life, pain itself loses its negative character and becomes a teacher of life. It is not impossible to meet people who, precisely through this transformation of pain into a school, have gained the most important experience of their lives. Their fear of pain has lessened, they have come to appreciate more deeply the importance of everyday experience, they have gained a new outlook on life, learned the difference between what is important and what is not, and gained the courage to choose between the essential and the inessential. Not infrequently, their language changes too. Their life habits change as well. The experience of pain has taught them that nothing is unimportant, and that much depends on our own decisions and our personal attitude towards the inevitable and painful experiences of life.

Pain can also be understood as a trial. A trial is a crisis. A trial is an exposure to something negative, but only in such a way as to reveal what I have built my life upon, and to show whether my stance towards life is firm enough to withstand the trials that fall upon it. A trial can be hard, but the one who withstands the trial discovers the strength of the foundation on which they have built their life. Naturally, pain understood as a trial can only be understood from within. Only the one who is struck by pain can place their pain within the framework of a trial. They will probably also have further reasons why their pain makes sense precisely as a trial. And they will certainly draw strength, both for enduring it and for overcoming it, from this way of making sense of pain. For a trial must be overcome. One must gather one’s strength and expose oneself to it in order to master it. Once mastered, a trial brings with it, besides the relief of the cessation of pain, also a deep joy at having overcome the trial. Life after a trial has been overcome is deeper, wider, closer, more joyful.

Pain can also be understood as tragedy. Pain is inevitable, and so it points us towards the ultimate inevitability of life: death. Death is a necessity. It reminds us that nature itself both generates and destroys. Our death lies at the very foundation of our life. We do not die because we fall ill, says Galimberti, but we fall ill because we are mortal beings. The tragedy lies in the fact that life itself is simultaneously ecstasy and cruelty, delight and pain. Our existence is tragic because the intoxication of life is inseparable from harshness and pain. Nature is a constant opposition of delight and pain, of life and death. Pain and death are an inevitable part of life. That is why life
is tragic. It is precisely by understanding life as tragedy that it becomes possible, within that framework, to find meaning in pain and suffering. As in every tragedy, so too in life it is possible to accept pain as an inescapable fate, to give it meaning, or to choose a way out of life.

Pain can also acquire a meaning of faith. It is possible to join our pain to the pains of Christ, to offer it for the salvation of the world or for the conversion of sinners.  While we, in our pain, see only ourselves, Jesus, in the heart of his suffering, is concerned for others. After the sentence is passed, he seeks Peter out with his eyes and finds him. In his gaze, Peter finds a way out of his betrayals. On the cross, he prays to the Father to forgive those who crucify him. He has eyes for the pain of his mother and of the beloved disciple. The cross was not made in heaven. The cross did not descend from the Father’s hand. The cross was made by human hands, by a human system, by our institutions of justice and protection. Yet when Jesus agrees to carry the cross and does not renounce love, the cross is transformed into a means of salvation. The transformation of shame and death into salvation and life. In this transformation, we sense the possible transformation of our own crosses, our own pains.

It is also possible to make sense of one’s suffering as atonement for one’s own sins and those of others. This faith-based way of making sense of pain breaks pain’s intention of cutting its victim off from the world and from others. By joining their pain to the sufferings of Christ, a person is no longer alone or isolated. They enter into the company of the Saviour, who through his suffering on the cross opened the doors of salvation to the world. They also enter into the company of the saints, who in a similar way, by bearing the sufferings of the world, entered into heavenly glory. Pain borne in this way becomes, for me, an entry into the communion of the saved. Pain understood in this way, too, can only be made sense of from within, from the inner will and decision of the sick person to place their suffering within the wider framework of Christ’s redemptive suffering. To enter into communion with Christ’s sufferings, neither lengthy prayer nor special study is required. Sometimes a single word, a thought, an inner openness is enough. Sometimes even a cry is enough. The framework of meaning for pain comes neither from pain itself nor from outside. It comes from within the one afflicted. And yet, what comes from outside is not unimportant either – from those close to us, from doctors, from nurses, from representatives of the community of faith, from brothers and sisters in faith.

Sometimes even a single word or a touch can turn a person tormented by pain towards one framework of meaning or another. Even through the greatest solitude of pain, a human word, a touch and closeness break through. And, of course, God’s word and his light break through too. In the life of Simone Weil, that unusual and profound woman, there is one experience connected with attention and pain. Once, during Holy Week, she was at Solesmes and attended all the services. She suffered from severe headaches. They were so intense that every sound struck her like a blow. She found a way out of this state through an extraordinarily intense attentiveness. It was as if, by attending to the purity and beauty of the singing and the words, she stepped outside her body, which remained convulsed with pain. In one such moment, she had a mystical experience of encountering Christ. Whenever a violent headache seized her, she would recite the poem Love, which she had discovered around that time and learned by heart. Pain tends to seize all our attention, while, on the other hand, it is precisely attention directed at something else that dispels pain.