It is through the process of Lament that we come to the realization that all of our hopes have been stripped away and what remains is Jesus on the road to Emmaus.
In lament, we cry out to G-d to be the redeemer of our current crisis. Through the process of lamenting, we eventually learn to relinquish our notions of being in control. After lament, all we have left is agency in how we respond to G-d and to the dis-ease of our current situation.
And now, finally, after lamenting, we understand just how pathetic all this really is. Pathetic, as from the Greek pathos, meaning experience or condition or emotion of suffering. Pathos is the road to Emmaus. It is a situation that can not be avoided or circumnavigated, only endured as we go through it. It is walking that road with our shattered hopes until, step by step, we come to accept that this is indeed the way things are now.
“Pathos Entered English in the 1500s. The Greek word páthos means "experience, misfortune, emotion, condition,” and comes from Greek path-, meaning “experience, undergo, suffer.” In English, pathos usually refers to the element in an experience or in an artistic work that makes us feel compassion, pity, or sympathy. The word is a member of a big family: empathy is the ability to share someone else’s feelings. Pathetic (in its gentlest uses) describes things that move us to pity. Though pathology is not literally "the study of suffering," it is "the study of diseases." Other relatives of pathos include sympathy, apathy, and antipathy.”
(Pathos Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster from Merriam-Webster online dictionary. https://www.merriam-webster.com › dictionary › pathos. Accessed Aug. 24, 2023.)
Pathos can also be understood as that quality of our experience that appeals to our emotions, evoking our internal response to suffering. It is the impetus to compassion and the beginning of empathy. In the pathetic, where we must accept our crisis for what it is, we are invited to change our perspective and relationship with suffering. It is our suffering that prevents us from recognizing Jesus on the road with us, even as the Christ listens intently to all that we had hoped for that is not, and will not, come to fruition. On our pathetic journey, we are wrestling with accepting what we thought was unacceptable. We struggle to understand how we are to respond. Do we stay and do nothing? Do you stay and fight to the point of exhausting everything, or do we shake the dust off of our feet and leave?
On that difficult walk to Emmaus, we are encouraged by Christ to name all that is lost, to open our eyes to what is happening, and to release our expectations of how we want things to be. Don’t we perpetuate our own suffering by refusing to accept that things are not how we want them to be? Isn’t our own suffering a denial of self-acceptance? When we are in crisis and have lamented all that is not right, begging G-d to come to the rescue, what is left for us to do while we wait for G-d to respond? At the end of our lamenting, when we are depleted and exhausted with nothing left to say, what would the Holy One have us do?
We are not G-d. We are not in control. All we really have now is just agency in how we respond to the pathetic situation we find ourselves in. Now we begin to comprehend that we do have agency in responding to that which feels so out of control. In our embodied movement with the Divine on the road to Emmaus, we have the opportunity to participate in relieving some of our own suffering by accepting what is, in fact, a pathetic condition.
Even though this is not what we had hoped for and this is not what we want, movement is change. Change is almost always stress-filled. It is uncomfortable, but it is a development in our situation. To ease our own suffering, we must accept that things are not in reality playing out as we had hoped or how we want it to be. We just have to keep moving through it. It sounds so simple, and yet is so hard to do.
This acceptance can’t come without empathy. The Risen Christ joins us on the road to Emmaus, present with us in the pathetic journey to acceptance. Empathy, again coming from the Greek, means to be in the pathetic. Christ is with us in the pathetic, in the suffering. Emmanuel; G-d with us. We are not alone in our suffering. G-d is with us, even if we are blinded to the Divine’s presence.
Perhaps, like other disciples before us, it is only after the fact that we can acknowledge that our hearts were burning as the Christ spoke to us on the journey. Didn’t it all become clear as we moved along the road together, while the Holy opened up the story of this suffering, and the significance of our pathetic part, in the ancient story of our faith? When we can finally acknowledge that we are indeed suffering, and a source of our suffering is our own repudiation of what is, that’s when compassion comes flooding in.
Compassion - with suffering. Compassion is a gift from Christ on the road to Emmaus. It is finally the Divine’s response to our laments. It is the Divine’s communication that we are not left alone to carry the burden of our pathetic situation, but, indeed, G-d is with us in our suffering. Once we can accept that, really accept it without any doubt, accept that G-d is with us, does not abandon us, and continues to love us just as we are in the pathetic place that we are ... well, that acceptance just might be the hinge of our critical circumstances. When our eyes are finally opened and we recognize who Christ is, recognize who we are in relationship with G-d, and recognize who G-d has created us to be in this pathetic world, we can finally, truly accept that we are loved, lovable, and capable of so much loving - even of ourselves in this pathetic experience.
If we believe that we are made in the image of G-d, the Trinitarian Divine, the Holy Loving Community, then we believe that, like G-d in Community, we are loved; we are lovable; we are loving. When we accept that G-d is loved, lovable, and loving and that our identity is loved, lovable, and loving, we may finally accept that we are worthy of compassion - and not just from G-d, but from ourselves.
Our acceptance of what is and release of what we wanted, is an invitation to tap into the aquifer of living water that never ceases. This source of living water, which is constantly refreshing and renewing our own self-compassion, is founded in Christ’s compassion for the us and the world.
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