BY: MICHAEL J. BRESCIA, MD
The major problem with our current social structure is the apparent inability to understand the nature of suffering. Suffering is an interrelated system of thoughts and emotions far more complicated than physical pain alone. Suffering involves a complex mix of the spiritual, mental, emotional and physical components that completes a human being.
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BY: LISA PICKER
My name is Lisa Picker. I have been a registered medical assistant for 33 years, serving first in pediatrics and now internal medicine. I love my job. It is my ministry. I have a loving husband and two beautiful daughters. This is not an easy story for me to retell. It has many layers, twists and turns, beginning very joyfully. It is graphic at times. For this I will not apologize. It is what we lived, and what he lived.
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BY: JENNIFER COX
A young woman who has endured sexual abuse since the age of 5. She is now grown up, but the abuse continues at the hands of more than 20 pimps.
A young boy whose mother sold him, at age 7, to a landlord for sex so she could make the rent payment and they would not end up homeless.
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BY: MONSIGNOR PATRICK ARIS
The mission of the Catholic Church in Haiti is, first of all, to spread the Good News. The local church walks alongside the Haitian people and gives the Gospel a voice in their daily lives and in the lives of those whom society leaves behind.
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BY: PAUL J. WADELL, PhD
Imagine you are in the hospital, seriously ill, and the prognosis is not promising. Your doctor comes in on his daily rounds and asks how you are. You tell him you are frightened, anxious and worried. You let him know that the prospect of death terrifies you because you cannot imagine life separated from those you love. It is, you say, as if your whole world is falling apart. Your doctor listens carefully and, you think, compassionately. You wait for him to console and reassure you. But then he says, "I understand, but are you happy?"
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BY: FR. JOHN PETRIKOVIC, OFM Cap.
I confess that, as a person who ministers to many people in their suffering, I more often than not desire to be a helper, trying to find the proverbial lifeline to throw to the drowning victim. Seldom do I picture myself in the water with the person. If we were both in the water, I figure, who would save whom?
But, we
are in the same water — or in the same boat, I guess. I sometimes think that there are only two kinds of people in the world: those who suffer and those who try desperately to avoid it.
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