To live in Guatemala with one’s mind and heart open is to learn of immense suffering. Working for and in Central America in the 1980s we followed news of repression, massacres, and nothing short of genocide against the indigenous — here and elsewhere in Latin America — and did whatever we could to speak out without endangering still others.
If there was one most lasting personal lesson from those years it was this: I try never to ask “Why me?” when illness or misfortune strikes, and hope I would not do so even if I were experiencing something worse than I am now — first the two torn up knees, and now post-surgery, weeks until I will begin to walk again.
I despise exceptionalism. When the Twin Towers fell on September 11, 2001, I remember an NPR anchor asking (not just reporting on others who were asking) how this could have happened to us — meaning US citizens. I have always been careful to whom I reported my reaction because I have not wanted to be misunderstood, nor especially to seem callous to those who perished. But it churns inside: Why wouldn’t it happen to us? Bracket the ways to US policies toward the Global South invite “blowback.” Why should we assume that in a world where so many suffer famine and exploitation and warfare, we are exempt?
Yes, as citizens we have a right to live in peace. But so do they. Yes, as human beings endowed with God-given dignity, we have a right to adequate food, housing, and health care. But so do they. Jesus promised that God cares about every sparrow that falls to the ground and values each one of us even more. But having recently fallen to the ground twice, in great pain, I notice that Jesus did not promise that we would be exempt from all falls.
I am not going to try to explain the tension lurking here. I can’t, and in fact I don’t think anyone can. As a theologian I have encountered some decent theories of evil and theodicy (the question of how bad things happen to good people). But the better they are, the less satisfying they are when one is actually in the presence of profound suffering, for the very eloquence of “answers” becomes an affront. All I know is that a willingness to be and stay “in the presence of” is the one response that begins to answer. And that the great cosmic gift of the Incarnation, by which God in Jesus Christ entered into all of our suffering and worse, may be all that answers — precisely because it is not an answer but a solidarity.
And so I enter Lent 2026 in bed and in wheelchair, not asking “Why me?” but grateful for all the love and care I am receiving from friends, Church, and world. I suspect that some of the wonderful nuns who run this place would speak of this kind of Lenten experience as an opportunity to enter more deeply into the sufferings of Christ. I would not resent that at all. Maybe by the end of these 40 days I’ll even understand what that means. Right now, it only sounds nice.
For now all I know is that I’m just a sparrow that has fallen, glad for God’s care, but unwilling to say anything about either the pain of hitting the ground, or the care by which God has raised me up through others’ care, that sounds as though I expect something special. The best I can do is to remember the words of Church Fathers who exhorted their flocks that if God gives them the goods of the world, it is not for them, but as a channel to others. I hope the graces I am receiving are ones I can pass on in some way.
But may the blood of the massacred and the martyrs cry out to drown my words if I either say “Why me?” about my suffering, or “Of course me,” about the graces that envelope me.
Wednesday, 18 February 2026