Thinking about victim souls and I saw this
This kind of thinking is what made me miserable. It’s as though Christians convince themselves to fall in love with suffering; it’s a religion built on the fact that you need to be broken down into bits. “You need to surrender. You need to be weak for god to be able to move through you.” With this kind of thinking, everyone tries to suffer more and more, and it becomes a type of competition to prove how awful you’re doing—how much you’re hurting. Everyone tries to be a “victim soul,” and it destroys the human spirit from the inside out.
And… yeah. I mean that’s a totally real possibility and does happen to people. But, firstly, this is a Catholic belief, not a widespread belief among the faithful; and (2) it’s not Catholic dogma (which is a teaching built into the religion), this is an unofficial Catholic belief derived from interpretations of Catholic teaching on redemptive suffering. There are many Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians who are also disinclined towards the belief in a victim soul. In fact, I think most non-Catholics are pretty truther off by it. Neither the Catholic Church, nor any other Christian denomination, considers the concept of victim souls to be dogma, or officially designates anyone a 'victim soul'. As it is not considered dogma, the Catholic Church classifies belief in victim souls as a matter of private revelation, and thus not obligatory for members to subscribe to.
But also beyond that: most christians do not teach that suffering is intrinsically good. I’d say suffering is intrinsically neutral: neither good nor evil. There’s this joke I’ve seen Catholics make about redemptive suffering that you’re going to suffer and you’re going to like it. But uhhh… you don’t have to like it. You do not have to like suffering! And I don’t know a single priest worth their vestments that would say so. Suffering, of the Self (not the Other: ALWAYS do whatever is in your power to alleviate the suffering of the Other as if they were Christ themself because the face of the Other is the Face of God), is to be accepted openhandedly as a part of the living experience and as an opportunity to participate in the energies of Christ. Temptation does not come from God, but from the adversary; and yet, the Ancestors are emphatic that without temptation there is no salvation. The wickedness and snares and fiery darts of the evil one are permitted by God for our repentance. And so we must not seek to avoid suffering by anaesthetizing ourselves — because we will suffer regardless. The cosmos is enslaved to darkness, death, decreation, and decay. But will your suffering be needless, the result of your appetites, cravings, and passions — will you become pathetic as you passively suffer the passions? Or will you suffer in the name of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful? Will you respond to temptation with self-loathing, with indulgence of vice, or with humble recognition of the need to depend on the favor of God? Will you respond to hatred with love and indifference with compassion? Will you bear the burdens of others, debase yourself both in solidarity with the oppressed and so that they might suffer less oppression and marginalization? If it is true that desire, love, eros, is the root of all suffering, will you detach yourself from your body and the desires of your body (of which there is truly only one: God), or will you allow the desire for union with God to lead you straight into the Consuming Fire to be decreated and recreated? Will you allow the Wille zur Liebe (which is the movement of God within the Self made in their image) to overthrow the Wille zum Leben? This is the Christian theology of suffering: that all things are given to you for your salvation and for the salvation of the cosmos.
To be personal (as is my wont): I believe in victim souls. To expose myself at risk of misunderstanding: I want to be a victim soul. I won’t go deep into this because it 100% overlaps with my slight passive suicide ideation (which is NOT the same thing!) but I will say, again at the risk of being misunderstood, I want to suffer materially and immaterially as a form of, not just Imitatio Christi, but unio mystica cum Christo. I want to become whole, that is, wholly unified to God in Christ by the Spirit who is Love, and permitted to offer my heart, soul, mind, and strength to the holistic salvation of those suffering the effects of Sin and Death. Victim souls are quite tied up with quite a few Catholic theories on atonement that I do not share (I am Orthodox in my insistence that the suffering is not ritualized), but I agree intimately with my companion in exile St Thérèse of Lisieux who wrote
Oh, Mother, what does it matter to write eloquently about suffering! Nothing! nothing! One must have experience of actual suffering to know the value of such utterances. … I know well now that all I have said and written is entirely true. … It is true that I have desired to suffer much for God, and it is true that I desire it still. … No, it is not frightful. A little victim of love can never find frightful that which her Bridegroom sends her …
This is what a victim soul is: a Victim of Love. Or rather, because I dislike the word victim (“No one takes my life from me: I lay it down as an offering of myself”; again, the killing is not ritualized and we consent to nonconsent), a living Martyr of Love. A Conqueror of Love. A Victor of Love. This is why I desire, especially as God makes it clear that they will not permit me to rot: to be ravished by Love and utterly consumed by the great love of God.
The promised land is only accessible to those who have been tortured.
To suffer is to know God. To know God is to suffer.
The only jewels that shall adorn the wives of Christ are thorns and the cross.
And yet. Also I know and we all must remember: flagellation and suffering are not enough to save us. Self-flaggelation does not make us holy; God does not need our suffering; we were not created for suffering, but suffering was instituted to serve our needs: and there is only truly one need — the telos of all human behavior is union with God: adoption as children of God, theosis, henosis, happiness everlasting, glorification, transcendental continuity.
And more than suffering is required to receive true union with God. We must love: in all we do, in suffering, in compassion, in generosity, in thanksgiving, in torture, in fasting, in feasting — we must love. It is by love, by abiding in Love, that we reach the wholeness, the transcendent continuity, which we seek. Even in the face of absence and of silence, God is still to be found: in beauty, in ritual, in each other. Our companion is “the one we eat God with”. God, Our True Mother, with infinite compassion, suffers alongside us; she is never silent. God is wherever there is love.
