Holy Face Novena:Day 3

THIRD DAY

(Console Holy Face and recite Daily Preparatory Prayer).(p. 1)
Psalm 51,6b-7.
You are just when you pass sentence on me,
blameless when you give judgment.
You know I was born guilty,
a sinner from the moment of conception.
Prayer of Pope Pius IX(‘Pio Nino’):
O Jesus! Cast upon us a look of mercy: turn your Face
towards each of us as you did to Veronica; not that we may
see it with our bodily eyes, for this we do not deserve, but
turn it towards our hearts, so that, remembering you, we
may ever draw from this fountain of strength the vigour neces-
sary to sustain the combats of life. Amen. Mary, our Mother,
and Saint Joseph, pray for us.
Through the merits of your precious blood and your Holy
Face, O Jesus, grant us our petition.................. Pardon
and mercy.
Prayer of Saint Francis
All highest, glorious God, cast your light into the darkness
of our hearts, give us true faith, firm hope, perfect charity
and profound humility, so that with wisdom, courage and
perception, O Lord, we may do what is truly your holy will.
Amen.
To the Angels and Saints
We salute you, through the Holy Face and Sacred Heart
of Jesus, O all you Holy Angels and Saints of God. We
rejoice in your glory, and we give thanks to our Lord for
all the benefits which He has showered upon you; we praise
Him, and glorify Him, and for an increase of your joy and
honour, we offer Him the most Holy Face and gentle Heart
of Jesus. Pray that we may become formed according to the
heart of God. Amen.
Pray (1) Our Father, three (3) Hail Mary's, one (1) Glory
Be.
O Bleeding Face, O Face Divine, be every adoration Thine.
(Three times)

                         “and I alone have escaped to tell you” (Job 1:15-19).
For those who have survived 'extreme conditions':

The most numerous reflections are those of scholars who most directly work on investigating human behavior in extreme conditions...In this regard, we could identify several particular several fields of investigation, exemplified by the articles selected here below:

1) the support that “creative” activities may give to survival in extreme situations, in that they help reinforce personal identity;

2) the study of social relationships and social identity in extreme conditions through literary accounts: [Or the immense lack of support therein...]

3) the psychology of the surviving witness who has to face not only the trauma of being a survivor but also the responsibility to testify, to be obliged to speak for the others...

4) the subjective dimension of the traumatic experience.

             H. Abramovitch, "Stimulating Ethical Awareness During Training", Journal of Analytical Psychology, LII, 2007, pp. 449–61

   Many may be familiar with Dawn Eden's name because of her powerful conversion story, her long-running blog The Dawn Patrol, her previous book The Thrill of the Chaste, or her writings in the Catholic press. (If not, this episode of EWTN's Life on the Rock is a good introduction. The Dawn Patrol is still active but more as a vehicle for announcements than as a typical blog.)  The book is a spiritual guide to healing the wounds of sexual abuse suffered in childhood and youth.

... I was wrong about its relevance; I soon realized that the counsel it contains is applicable to all sorts of other situations. It wasn't until after I'd finished reading it that I realized that the title doesn't refer specifically to molestation in childhood or youth: it simply says "sexual wounds." And don't we all have those, one way or another? Or, if not specifically sexual wounds, then wounds, period. 

I can say in one sentence that the essence of the book is that love has the power to heal the past. In eight chapters, each bearing a title that begins with the words "The Love," Dawn describes aspects of this healing, using examples from the lives and thoughts of specific saints interwoven with her own experiences to illustrate specific ways by which that healing can happen:

The Love We Forget: Discovering the Father--with St. Ignatius Loyola and St. Josephine Bakhita
The Love That Shelters: Opening our hearts to the Sacred Heart--with Mary, Mother of Hope

And so on. As you can see from those two, the saints brought to bear on this problem are not necessarily ones who suffered from sexual abuse. Ignatius, for instance, might seem an odd one for the purpose. But he appears, and appears first, because he asked God to take, along with everything else of him, his memory:

In Ignatius's understanding of the human mind, the concept of memory refers to more than just particular memories. Memory includes everything that had entered into his consciousness to make him who he was--whether or not he could actually remember it. It forms the foundation of his present identity, including his hopes for his future.

To borrow a phrase from another Jewish convert, Edith Stein, this book can be fairly described as a science of the Cross. The emphasis throughout is not on conquering the past but on accepting it and, most importantly, being reconciled with it in the love of God, and I mean that in the reciprocal sense: God's love for the sufferer, and the sufferer's love for God.

One reads of people surviving terrible traumas (such as the one that recently came to light in Ohio, in which three women were kidnapped and subjected to rape and other mistreatment for ten years). And often the advice given to them, and the intention they announce, give the impression that they are to conquer their emotional damage by sheer force of will: to repress the memories, to adopt an attitude of conquering courage--to triumph by strength and endurance in the way that an athlete does. That at least is the impression that the vocabulary often gives. 

Now, far be it from me to suggest that I know better how to cope with trauma than those who have experienced it. But from the Christian point of view it doesn't seem the most appropriate or indeed effective way. Sufferers are advised not to let the trauma define them, and in one sense this is surely good advice--if it means not to allow one's whole identity to be reduced to that of one who has suffered a specific trauma. In another, though, it isn't the Christian way: we are to some significant extent defined by those things, and we have to incorporate them into ourselves rather than attempt to remove them surgically, so to speak. It is a necessary aspect of the reality of the Cross as it touches each life.

This perhaps is the truth contained in some of the saints' legends that have always struck me as grotesque to say the least, in which the saint is picture in heaven as still exhibiting some mutilation suffered in his or her martyrdom. I really find this hard to handle, and hope it is not literally true. But it is surely symbolically true. 

Be that as it may, in Dawn's case the road of direct resistance simply did not work. Much of the personal story recounted here deals with her attempts to repress the memories and their accompanying emotions, with generally ineffective (if not disastrous) results. It was only by accepting--not "embracing," exactly--her experiences, and placing them, with the assistance of these saints' stories, within her personal salvation history that she has been able to reduce their destructive power over her. (I don't say "conquer," as if it were all over, because things don't generally work that way.) 

Although much of the story has already been told in this book and her other writings, I found myself hoping that Dawn would eventually write an actual memoir or autobiography that would bring all the pieces of personal narrative together in one place. But then maybe this mixture of memoir and theology is the right one for her. 

This book would certainly be a great tool for anyone engaged in counseling victims of sexual abuse, and it includes a number of resources for just that purpose. But, as I said before, it can be useful for anyone who has suffered, which is to say everyone:

Memory does not have to be, nor should it be, the enemy. Rather, as Pope Benedict XVI has written, "Memory and hope are inseparable. To poison the past does not give hope; it destroys its emotional foundations."

(Here is the publisher's page for My Peace I Give You.)

I cannot find the link from the post where this came from...forgive me.

... Michael Bernard-Donals writes in the case traumatic memories, that "testimony marks the absence of events, since they did not register on, let alone become integrated into, the victims' consciousness." So testimony is not about the history of the event, so much as it is about the effect of the event on the victim. Setting this within the framework Caruth has laid out, testimony is about the act of departure, of walking away, and what happens when one manages to walk away, what one can recover after walking away. Furthermore, testimony is an act of asking recognition for the fact that the testifier has managed to walk away, and acknowledgement of what it is they walked away from.
‘Delayed Manifestations”

God reminds us: ‘Their blood cries out from the earth...”

In the delayed manifestation of the generational mystery, we and they are paying for what has been done.  We pay for our own sins but justice requires reparation to the community that has been harmed by the evil.  From the beginning it is required of each person to ‘make things right’.  Serious wounding of a soul must be atoned and set right within society for ‘No man is an island.’  If the contagion were TB or any other disease the transmission would be understood with a society’s communal understanding, research, treatment methods and healing arts with ‘healing’ places.  This same philosophy and belief must be incorporated to include dealing with soul and psychological wounds and diseases.

...” Here is where the limits of psychoanalysis are revealed: even as it tries to get to the origins, it doesn't offer us a solution for the now. What are the measures to take in dealing with these manifestations? Can we, in effect, perform a kind of damage control? ‘

Yes.  Christ’s shed blood ‘atones’ for every sin of every person but we must accept it, come to understand it, and then help wash the feet of our brethren and serve them in shouldering the cross they carry. And we must tenderly wash their face as Veronica washed Christ’s.

                                                    ***

Sweeping things under the rug, hiding things in the dark and rationalizing the ways we harm each other in order to preserve a false peace or more insanely to maintain an image in a community already broken solves nothing.  It is gravely disastrous and destructive.  It is based on fear and pride which destroys love, families and communities. Prestige is self-love often at the expense of others and truth.

                             “Come. Let us reason together.” ~God

“To follow an ancient trace when there seems none
And no light given; to push on through the dark,
Knowing the right direction against the wind;
Simply to keep on at the given task,
Its time and place set by God’s providence..."  ~Helen Pinkerton

                        "Behold, how they loved one another."

Everyone is invited to contribute toward the healing of the festering sexual wound at the heart of mankind.

                 “Without love, forgiveness, justice and reparation the community cannot heal. All of these depend on ‘truth’.  It is only through ‘truth’ that love and healing can flow.

                      “I AM the way, the TRUTH, and the life.” -Jesus
                               Sacred Heart of Jesus I trust in You.