In my work with badly-damaged people at our Nazareth Formation House in San Jose Batangas, I constantly remind our resident to thank God for His many blessing. I especially ask them to thank Him for those blessings that come wrapped in pain.

     We often forget that many of God’s greatest blessings come to us by way of pain, and sometimes, very intense pain. Think of Christ coming among us to save us. Remember His agony in the garden and His cruel death on the cross. All blessings wrapped in pain. There are blessings that are difficult to look out because of the pain and humiliation He suffered. And there are ones that are hard to accept because of the guilt that we feel if we have a conscience and even one ounce of decency.

     I am a witness to the pain that has wrecked the lives of those I counsel at Nazareth. I am witness to the damage caused by abuse, negligence and so many other preventable factors. And I am inspired when I watch these wounded people fight hard to get their lives together, to win back the trust and confidence of their loved ones, and to make amends for the pain and damage that they have caused. The skills that they learn along the way will be with them all their life if they choose to use them. Their character was formed in pain and through a painful process they earn their sobriety.

     So pain isn’t at all as negative as some would have us think it is. It can, at times, be very beneficial.

     A psychoanalyst friend of mine, Manfred Kets de Vries, wrote some insightful lines about the topic: “I have learned from the school of hard knocks that our character in formed more by our failures than our successes. Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents that, in more advantageous circumstances, would have remained dormant. In that respect, life is a succession of lessons that must be lived to be understood. To me, the only thing worse than making a mistake, is making a mistake and not learning from it. If we look at it closely, wisdom might turn out to be nothing more than healed pain.

     “I’ve learned that it takes courage to face one’s own shortcomings, and wisdom to do something about them. There is a Spanish saying that tells us, ‘It is not the same to talk of bulls as to be in the bullring.’ In some ways, life is like an onion: we peel it off layer-by-layer, and we may weep at times while we do. We all seem to be seeking the meaning of life, whatever that may be for each of us. But perhaps, more pragmatic is to have our external experiences resonate with our inner reality. The major task each of us faces is to give birth to ourselves.”