From Suffering to Sacred Wounds
Friday, August 7, 2026
Father Richard reflects on Job’s story as a source of wisdom about the path of transformation:
No piece of religious literature teaches the way of “descent” more daringly and effectively than the book of Job. The story cries out against a darkness that refuses to reveal itself—and a path that does not feel at first like life at all. This makes it a challenging but important text for those of us in the West who tend to resist the archetypal and necessary journey of “descent.” We have been able to manufacture a kind of “ascent” unlike that of our ancestors. Reason, medicine, technology, and speed have allowed us to avoid the ordinary “path of the fall.” Now we are unpracticed and afraid of all kinds of suffering—big and small.
At the same time, no book is less an answer book than the book of Job. It fixes nothing, explains nothing, and dismisses those who even try to explain, yet the story of Job realigns and regenerates the soul in ways that few books can.
If the postmodern crisis is above all else a crisis of the self, and I think it is, then the story of Job realigns the “self”—correctly, humbly, and truthfully. What both Job and Jesus seem to say is that truth is finally a person and an encounter—much more than a concept that can be argued. It is not quick or easy to encounter the true self or the true God. Both encounters require a gradual unveiling that is both sacred and full of suffering. Every movement toward union with God will feel like a loss of self-importance and self-control. We are realigned with truth when the real person meets the real God—which is exactly the stuff of spirituality, good theology, and transformation.
The book of Job ultimately assures us that faith can forever be found, like the hill of Calvary, “outside the walls.” In fact, that is where it finds its most ready soil—at the bottom, the broken, the edges of things.
If no meaning can be given to human suffering, if our wounds are not capable of becoming sacred wounds, the human project is surely doomed to a blaming war of all against all. The future, like the past, will be full of scapegoats and victims. This is no peripheral question the book of Job pursues.
Without the response from God in the whirlwind—what we might call today the sacred or transcendent dimension—life will surely be “nasty, brutish, and short” for most people in the twenty-first century. There will be no place to go to make our wounds sacred, but they will still be wounds, sore and bleeding. If there is no voice from the whirlwind, no calming eyes in the heart of the tempest, humanity can only “sit on its dung heap picking at its sores.” But in Job and in Jesus, we have heard a story that is always true, a story that makes all our wounds sacred.
Reference:
Adapted from Richard Rohr, Job and the Mystery of Suffering: Spiritual Reflections (Crossroad Publishing, 1996), 185–187.
1.
“Consider your origin. You were not formed to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.”
– Dante Alighieri in The Divine Comedy
Well, I guess according to Dante Alighieri, it is brutish to follow vices and foolishness.
I think that as an itinerant rabbi, Jesus would agree with that.
2.
“The closer one approaches to God, the simpler one becomes.”
– St. Therese of the Child Jesus
This one has stood out to me since I read Therese’s autobiography, The Story of a Soul.
I think I was simple in my youth. I do not mean this in any pejorative way, just that I did not have any extravagant ideas or things that made me really stand out.
Then, in my teenage years and college years (and perhaps even in my young adult years), I wanted to be seen as complex, interesting, with deep thoughts that were unique and adventurous.
But now….
Not so much.
Now, I realize the value and the beauty of the simple life. I enjoy a simple morning, beautiful music, etc. Gone are the days when I wanted to watch shows or movies with intense adventure or high stakes. I’ve seen enough of the world’s complexity and violence that I would truly choose the quiet, simple life every day if I could.
Perhaps that is one marker of knowing that you have entered the “second half of life,” in that we then begin to prefer the quiet, simple, and small life.
3.
“One who really loves another is not merely moved by the desire to see him contented and healthy and prosperous in this world. Love cannot be satisfied with anything so incomplete. If I am to love my brother, I must somehow enter deep into the mystery of God’s love for him.”
– Thomas Merton in No Man is an Island
The first chapter of No Man is an Island is called “Love Can Only Be Kept By Being Given Away.” Thus far, it is still the best chapter I have ever read on godly love.
The world has a relatively low bar for love, in that it might just be happy with us being content, healthy, and prosperous.
What is interesting is that godly love is different because it seeks the deep, mysterious good of God’s love for another person.
And, let’s be honest… Being content, healthy, and prosperous can actually become hindrances to the Good happening in our lives.
What if we are content with things that we ought to fight against?
What if, being healthy, we fail to recognize our interdependence with one another?
What if being prosperous leads us to be stingy with our money, or impulsive with what we choose to buy, and then regret it?
To love at all means that we must want the Good for one another, and that includes wanting the mystery of the love of God. As Merton says, we must enter deeply into the mystery of God’s love for other people.
4.
“Lukewarm people don’t really want to be saved from their sin; they want only to be saved from the penalty of their sin.”
– George MacDonald in Unspoken Sermons
Two or three years ago, I bought a hardcover copy of all of George MacDonald’s sermons. I read half of them, and then life got in the way.
One thing that fascinates me is how, even though MacDonald was a Scottish preacher in the late 1800s, he read very much like the early Patristics of Church history. There is something about his theology and way with words that is refreshing, precise, holy, integrated, and joyful.
MacDonald is the first theologian I know of to articulate how mercy and judgment can coexist in God. These two things, mercy and judgment, are not mutually exclusive. There can be mercy even as there is judgment, and there can be judgment even as there is mercy.
Modern Western Christianity, however, wants to hold these two things apart.
We either want full judgment without any mercy for some (usually for others) or full mercy without any judgment for others (usually for ourselves or those close to us).
MacDonald helped me understand that, in the justice of God, our vices do not disqualify us from God, yet that does not mean we will not experience the repercussions, consequences, or the need to make amends.
5.
“The trouble is that we live far from ourselves and have but little wish to get any nearer to ourselves. Indeed, we are running away all the time to avoid coming face to face with our real selves, and we barter the truth for trifles.”
– The Way of a Pilgrim (Russian Spiritual Classic)
Is it just a human thing to want to run from ourselves?
Dogs don’t do it. Cats don’t do it. Neither do horses.
Why is it that we are so uncomfortable with ourselves?
Perhaps it is because we each have an archetypal understanding of what it means to be a human being, a mental image to which we are constantly inspired by as well as judged by.
Cats, dogs, and horses don’t have an “ideal” version of themselves. They simply are what they are.
For some of us, our image of what it means to be human might inspire us to go to the gym, do helpful work in the world, and be creative in ways unique to us. For others, their image of what it means to be human is so far removed from who we are that we probably run from or avoid confronting the gap between our ideals and ourselves.
It is not an easy thing to drink reality straight and look at all the ways we fail to live up to our ideals.
I say all this because I think Jesus is interesting as the archetypal human. He is our image of what it means to be a “perfect human,” and as such, he inspires us and causes us to “aim higher.” And, in the same breath, he “judges” us for all the ways that we do not live up to that ideal and forgives us anyway. As our archetype of what it means to be human, Jesus inspires, judges, and forgives.
