‘Suffering Well’: Insights for spiritual directors from Friedrich von Hügel and Abbé Huvelin

ABSTRACT

‘Suffering Well’ is a key emphasis that the religious philosopher, Baron Friedrich von Hügel (1852–1925), inherited from his spiritual director, Abbé Henri Huvelin (1838–1910). Huvelin and von Hügel both recognized there is no beauty in suffering per se. However, they both argued that ‘suffering well’ – somehow coming to accept sufferin and ‘pressing into Christ’ in the pain – can lead to transformation. Whilst holding this position, von Hügel also recognized that suffering can narrow and harden souls. Rather than glorifying suffering or seeking suffering through asceticism like Huvelin, von Hügel recommended a focus upon Christ in love, through contemplative prayer and the Eucharist. This paper explores this uncomfortable idea of ‘suffering well’ as taught by both Huvelin and von Hügel, as well as highlighting the differences between their positions. To further problematize this complex area, I have incorporated into this discussion the voices of poets who express their suffering with varying degrees of joy in the midst of their pain. This dialogic mixture of experiences of suffering and theologies of suffering raises questions about how spiritual directors today might accompany their directees and help them to ‘suffer well’.

KEYWORDS:

• Suffering well
• transformation
• Abbé Huvelin
• Friedrich von Hügel
• spiritual direction

Acknowledgements

Poems by Tagore, Blake and Shakespeare are in the public domain. The author thanks Pichgut Press for permission to quote from Marjorie Pizer's poem ‘Re-birth’ http://pinchgut-press.com.au

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Robyn Wrigley-Carr is Senior Lecturer in theology and spirituality at Alphacrucis College, Sydney, Australia. Robyn received a scholarship from the University of St Andrews to pursue her PhD full-time at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, and focused upon the spiritual direction of Baron Friedrich von Hügel. Robyn completed her spiritual direction formation through Wellspring Centre, University of Divinity, Melbourne, Australia.

ORCID

Robyn Wrigley-Carr http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6146-7892

Notes

1 Huvelin’s ‘Sayings’ are the advice he gave to von Hügel during spiritual direction sessions. The Baron wrote them down and they are published in Gardner (1926).

2 Von Hügel writes that by contrast, Newman never ‘radiated’ such ‘spiritual joy and expansion’ (Greene1927, xxiv). He attributes this to Newman’s ‘deeply predestinarian, Puritan training’, whereas Huvelin ‘had nourished his soul, from boyhood upwards, on the Catholic spirituality as it flowered in St. Francis’ (Von Hügel 1926, 242).

3 Von Hügel describes this to Juliet Mansel: ‘ … my ever great, rich, heroic Abbe Huvelin  …  what a suffering in life for 40 years and more, and what a spiritually joyous  …  life … ’ (May 12, 1911, ms 37194/25d. Special Collections, University of St Andrews).

4 William Blake. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/43650/auguries-of-innocence

5 Elizabeth Jennings ‘Words About Grief’ in Collected Poems (1986).

6 Marjorie Pizer, ‘Re-birth’, Poems (2017). Accessed 7/12/2017. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=tYtLCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA51&lpg=PA51&dq=Marjorie+Pizer+Rebirth&source=bl&ots=8vo_WKYSR3&sig=-8AnxI6kSF8bTZhdmS2OTCphNbw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj-79WQ7fbXAhUCl5QKHdiGC6wQ6AEISTAJ#v=onepage&q=Marjorie%20Pizer%20Rebirth&f=false

7 C. S. Lewis, ‘The Naked Seed’ (2017). Accessed 7/12/2017. https://withchristianeyes.net/2013/06/09/christian-poems-xii-three-by-cs-lewis/.

8 Marjorie Pizer, To You the Living. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=mChKCAAAQBAJ&pg=PT51&lpg=PT51&dq=marjorie+pizer+When+I+am+overwhelmed+by+destruction&source=bl&ots=gMIjztGhwI&sig=AkoiW-

9 Ms 2694, 6th September, 1891, Special Collections, University of St Andrews.

10 Similarly he writes of ‘pain’ as ‘his greatest teacher’ (Greene 1927, xxxviii) and ‘Suffering is the greatest teacher … suffering is the crown of life.’ (Greene 1927, xv-xvi).

11 This idea is echoed by Adeline, Duchess of Bedford who writes regarding Huvelin: ‘Pain he regarded as the condition of spiritual fecundity, a travail of the soul must (whether for nations or individuals) precede the new birth of grace and power’ (1911, 34).

12 This is in contrast to the woman who ‘By thinking constantly of herself  …  her heart hardens, she becomes indifferent to the sufferings of others … ’ (Huvelin 1936, 131).

13 He is like the Curé of Ars who writes: ‘You say it is hard to suffer? No, it is easy; it is happiness  …  only the first step is painful’ (quoted in Von Hügel 1912, 373).

14 We see this in relation to von Hügel when Huvelin writes to him ‘I feel your suffering … ’ (Ms 2692, 11th August, 1887, Special Collections, University of St Andrews).

15 But this one criticism is given a positive ‘spin’. Ruining health is what saints do! Von Hügel speaks of how the mortifications brought forth ‘wonderful gentleness and moderation  …  patience! All that was the result of his self-discipline’ (Greene 1927, xxiv). I wonder whether Huvelin viewed asceticism as purgatorial in the literal sense or perhaps even vaguely salvific.

16 Huvelin advises von Hügel: ‘Allow others to make you suffer’ (Gardner 1926, 59).

17 Steuart (1938, 154–156) writes that ‘Huvelin lived a life of great austerity and from his early youth he had made constant use of bodily penances  …  He had, and said so, no sympathy whatever with the familiar argument that the day of self-inflicted penances is over  …  He was an extremist … ’.

18 This role is described by Steuart (1938, 154–155) who writes of Huvelin's ‘ … desire to offer oneself to suffer as a victim standing between God and sinners  …  to save and heal and atone for the evil-doing of the world’. Mère Marie-Agnès de l'Incarnation, one of Huvelin's spiritual directees, writes that ‘One had the impression that he himself undertook the penance of his converts … ’ (quoted in Louis-Lefebvre 1967, 207).

19 Ms 2704, 1900, n.d. Special Collections, University of St Andrews.

20 It is tragic that Huvelin did not have some sort of spiritual director himself to discern his exhaustion and depression and to help him rest.

21 Huvelin’s explicit description of having to ‘play a character’ suggests that the negative comments in his diary are not simply a form of self-deprecating, saintly humility, but that, to some extent, Huvelin had two personae.

22 The + is most probably ‘kill’. Similarly, after visiting a dying woman, he has ‘extreme envy to be in her place’ (Portier 1979, 44).

23 Malcolm to Macduff in Shakespeare Macbeth, Act 4, Sc.3.

24 However, Von Hügel (1926, 240) makes it clear that ‘The spirit, and even some mild amount of the actual practice, of such austerities is, indeed, an integral constituent of all virile religion: the man who laughs at the plank bed and the discipline is a shallow fool’. von Hügel recognises, nevertheless, that asceticism may help some people, but for many, ‘the spirit’ of austerities is sufficient. He describes one woman who showed no ‘attrait to such mortifications … ’ and he argues, ‘Souls exist which are as truly called to such mortifications, as her soul was not called to them’ (Von Hügel 1926, 241). Von Hügel also writes that asceticism is ‘an absolutely essential constituent of the Christian outlook … ’ (Greene 1927, 37).

25 Von Hügel tells Gwen to ‘Get rid of all self-occupation … self-oblivion is a splendid thing; move out of yourself, let in God’ (Greene 1927, xxiii).