Holy Face Novena: Day 4

(Console Holy Face and recite Daily Preparatory Prayer).(p. 1)

Psalm 51,8-9.
Indeed you love truth in the heart;
then in the secret of my heart teach me Wisdom.
O purify me, then I shall be clean;
O wash me. I shall be whiter than snow.
O Lord Jesus, who has said, learn of me for I am meek
and gentle of heart, and who did manifest upon Thy Holy
Face the sentiments of Thy divine heart, grant that we may
love to come frequently and meditate upon Thy divine fea-
tures. We may read there Thy gentleness and Thy humility,
and learn how to form our hearts in the practice of these two
virtues which Thou desires to see shine in Thy servants.
Mary our Mother and Saint Joseph help us.
Through the merits of Thy precious blood and your Holy
Face, O Jesus, grant us our petition.................. Pardon
and mercy.
Prayer in Honour of the Dolours of the Blessed Virgin
O Most Holy and afflicted Virgin, Queen of Martyrs! Who
stood beneath the cross, witnessing the agony of your dying
Son, look down with a mother's tenderness and pity on us
as we kneel before you to venerate your Dolours and place
our requests, with filial confidence, in the sanctuary of your
wounded heart. Present them on our behalf to Jesus, through
the merits of His most sacred Passion and Death, together
with your sufferings at the foot of the cross, and through the
united efficacy of both, obtain the favour which we humbly
ask. To whom shall we go in our wants and miseries if not
to you. O Mother of Mercy, who having so deeply drunk of
the chalice of your Son, graciously alleviate the sufferings
of those who still sigh in this land of exile. Amen.

Prayer for the Souls in Purgatory
My Jesus, by the sorrows you suffered in your agony in
the garden, in your scourging and crowning with thorns, in
the way to Calvary, in your crucifixion and death, have
mercy on the souls in Purgatory, and especially on those that
are most forsaken. Deliver them from the dire torments they
endure. Call them and admit them to your most sweet embrace
in Paradise. Amen.
Pray one (1) Our Father, three (3) Hail Mary's, one (1)
Glory Be.
O Bleeding Face, O Face Divine, be every adoration Thine.
(Three times)

Intergenerational Trauma

...children’s minds can be unwittingly imprinted by the experiences of prior generations. Such transmission is one of the most vexing aspects of the issue. Isn’t it bad enough for survivors to have been traumatized? Must they also be unwilling vehicles for trauma to their offspring? But then trauma is not just; and its unfairness is universal.

experiences are most prone to be transmitted from parents to children is when the children are young, and when the parents are traumatized. When both conditions prevail, transmission is especially likely to occur.

Childhood

The younger the child, the more vulnerable it is. In order to survive, until the age

of 3, children’s developing brains and physiological systems tune in to environmental,

especially maternal influences. They drink in the world with their mother’s milk. They

imbibe and respond to their parents’ physiological and behavioural responses and both

become imprinted in the developing brain and its connections.

Between 3 and 7, language and thinking develop, but are not cohesive.

Physiological attunements are replaced by mental attunements in the form of imitation

and obedience, especially in stressful situations. The child fantasizes a benevolent

coherent world arranged for it by its parents-gods. If things go wrong, children believe

that it was because they were not obedient, good enough.

    “How many times have you heard my father did it this way and his father before him...never realizing it may not be a positive ‘historia’ to pass on to a child...?”

After the age of seven, children’s minds are much more cohesive, and achieve

ever greater capacity for critical thinking. But the early imprints are stored unaltered and

can sometimes unwittingly over-ride the logical mind.

Parental traumas included multiple separations, losses of family friends and communities, humiliations, powerlessness and helplessness. In traumatic situations survivor parents reacted in some ways like survival driven children:

they responded physiologically and behaviorally, without thinking, instinctively evoking primitive brain circuits like, fight, flight, attachment and struggle, depending on the situation.

When thoughts entered their traumatized minds, they did so in fragments like in

children. Seeing how things had gone wrong, like children, survivors often blamed

themselves, for instance suffering survivor guilt. They might view themselves as

unworthy to have survived.

Massive traumas and subsequent interpretations may be so unbearable that they

were pushed out of awareness. Thoughts, memories and feelings associated with the

traumas were pushed into a void, sometimes called the unconscious. Traumas became

untellable, unspeakable dark black holes.

Yet no matter how hidden, physiological, emotional, behavioral, and attitudinal

fragments, especially if triggered by circumstances reminiscent of the trauma, flooded

into the visible world. These fragments on their own, disconnected from their sources, did

not make sense. They were often called symptoms.

Secondary traumatization; transmission of trauma

Children of traumatized parents, especially young ones, experience their parentgods

as not recognising them as the children that they are, and only inconstantly tending

to their needs. Rather, they experience them either screaming silently, untellably,

incoherently, mysteriously, from their black holes, or exploding like gods of thunder and

lightning in audible screams, and irrational symptoms. Children’s own physiologies,

sensations, feelings, behaviours and attitudes alternate between imbibing and rebelling

against parents’ over-silent or over-loud responses. In either case they are drawn into

their parents’ traumas, and are secondarily traumatized by them.

They experience double trouble: not only are they required to adjust to their parents’ alternating physiological circuits, emotions, behaviors and attitudes, but they must cope with their own automatic survival responses to their parents. They may not understand either. Their own stories may be in untellable fragments.

And as happened with their parents, when thought glimmers beyond automatic reactions in these children of survivors, they may feel guilt; for having brought on their parents’ suffering, not having rescued their parents from their troubles, not enlivened them sufficiently...                 -Transgenerational Trauma

===============

Sooner or Later

If you are going to work with severe abuse survivors, you must also get educated if you want to be effective. And you must learn to be humble. Trauma survivors do not need to be around ignorant, modern-day Pharisees. Survivors in pain need people who will connect with them on an emotional level, get right down in there where they are, and listen. --Kathleen Sullivan

Sooner or later the wounds will fester and explode in physical and emotional dis-eases.

These wounds have to be addressed as ‘justice’.  Whole generations of families are not allowed to grieve properly.  Whole communities are affected. 
“Whenever a person has experienced an injury to the core self, re-experiencing the injury is so deeply unsettling that it feels like a sort of death; it is emotionally agonizing and even physically searing...Such pain needs someone who can understand such depths and who is able to empathize and stand with a person so wounded...Almost always a professional aptly trained in such areas is absolutely necessary.”
We need to come to terms with the fact that the grieving process cannot be rushed.  None of us find any pleasure in seeing people we loved overwhelmed with sorrow, but we must resist the temptation of trying to push them to instant recovery.  There is nothing we can do or say, there is no verse or funeral lesson that can grant immunity from sorrow.  People must be allowed to grieve (Genesis 37:34-35; 2 Samuel 12:17).  It is significant to note that other cultures had lengthy periods of mourning (Genesis 50:3), and even professional mourners existed who, among other things, served to assist the family in venting their grief (Jeremiah 9:17).   We are making a mistake when we quickly try to make everything better or act as if nothing had happened (Proverbs 25:20).
Sometimes the wounds are so deep, so complex and traumatic that healing may also be complex and as traumatic as physical surgery.

"For it is a good thing to have a broken heart, and pleasing to God, as it is written: 'The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit...' [Psalm 51:19]...God does not entirely heal those who have broken hearts. He only eases their suffering, lest it torment and deject them...”

~Thomas à Kempis

In one sonnet,No Worst, There is None, Fr. Gerard Hopkins SJ writes:
"O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there.
Those who struggle with mental illness know the mountains of the mind and how dangerous they can be. At times they hang, as it were, by a thread over a precipice. Those who have not struggled in this way have a hard time understanding.
Another among what are known as "The Terrible Sonnets," captures the experience of darkness and despair and the silence of God.
"I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day,
What hours, O what black hours we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must yet, in longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.

How does the poet deal with this? How does he try to deal with himself?

"My own heart let me more have pity on; let
Me live to my sad self hereafter kind,
Charitable; not live this tormented mind
With this tormented mind tormenting yet.

We must go deeper. We must enter more deeply into the Eucharistic Heart of Jesus…

Christ is there in the bitterest biting pain...with us... We must understand the ambiguities of our own beings.  We must tolerate paradoxes and spectrums in our living being. This, my friend, is the Cross.  In humility we must stay there, at the Foot of the Cross

The Work of Mourning

Soul Wounds

"Just as we seek a doctor without any delay and hasten to apply remedies if some blow or wound comes over our body; so we should act with regard to the wounds of our souls."  ~Saint Caesarius of Arles

                                “I too suffer from the wounds of My friends…”

                                  Sacred Heart of Jesus I trust in You.