Archeology of Trauma, Eschatology of Healing

In today’s Gospel Jesus calls for a cessation to the endless cycle of judgments which lead to condemnations.  Such a teaching is itself---and indeed requires---an act of discernment (judgment), which then implies the rejection (condemnation) on our part of what is harmful.  But it is the pusillanimous (small-souled) logic of vengeful reaction and further counter-reaction that threatens Christian magnanimity (great-souledness) and leads to spiritual death.  Toward encouraging this greatness of soul, Christ thus proposes as the antidote to the wrong type of judgment and condemnation:  “Give and gifts will be given to you; a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing, will be poured into your lap.  For the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you.”  

I have found both in the Confessional and in my own heart that past hurts---especially ones involving specific people---risk being replayed endlessly, the result always being a hypothetical prosecution of those involved resulting in a clear guilty verdict actually benefitting no one.  On October 14, 2010, for example, a technician in my orthodontic treatment was unable to affix a thick wire into the brackets in the back of my mouth.  After about ten minutes of aggressive trying, there were tears down my face, sweat on her brow, and an apologetic admission of failure.  A supervisor had to finish the procedure, which also happened to include the introduction of rubber bands to further re-position my jaw.  It was at this point, I knew, that my problems began.  For the first time in my life, I experienced my jaw seeming to move in and out of place painfully when I attempted to eat certain foods.  And this was accompanied by other painful symptoms which progressively worsened as the months went by.  But spiritually I noted as well during this same time that I would return again and again to that single event and be filled with an accusatory anger which also increased in symptoms and progressively worsened, even though I knew in this case that the person involved had tried her best and intended no harm. 

When I finally was referred to the Piper Clinic, which specializes in treating serious jaw problems, I was sent a raft of paperwork to fill out about my medical history, including a form asking detailed questions about any head trauma I may have endured.  What I found strange was that there were multiple copies of this same form included, as if Dr. Piper wanted a catalogue of every bad thing that ever happened to my head over the course of my life!  I was convinced that my problem was caused on a single day by a single event.

In any case, during my initial exam, Dr. Piper and his staff again seemed very interested in the whole history of my jaw.  I did note that I had had braces in middle school, involving having teeth pulled, a head-gear (torture) device worn, and the jaw significantly altered.  After the CT-scans and an MRI, Dr. Piper---to my utter shock---concluded that it was probably a childhood injury that started the whole history of what was ultimately catalyzed by my adult orthodontic treatment (children bump their jaws all the time in falls they don’t even remember).  I was shown that the bone structures of my lower jaw on which the cartilage discs normally rest were underdeveloped, a condition consistent with childhood injury.  I was also shown how at one point (probably in my first round of braces), the discs partially slipped, but my body grew a “pseudo-disc” seemingly to compensate (oh the powers of the young!).  When, several months later, my joints were actually opened up in surgery, Dr. Piper’s conclusions were verified and then some:  He told me that he found “decades of damage” to both the joint and surrounding bone and had to remove “layers of scar tissue” indicative of “years of injury.”

Each phrase of  this surgeon’s lapidary announcement---“decades of damage,” “layers of scar tissue,” “years of injury”---has resounded over and over again in my mind and heart over the course of this post-operative time, but in a different way than my repetition of the one situation that I had thought “caused” my problem.  My relief has proven to be not simply in having the problem “fixed.”  There is also a mysterious, much more subtle, spiritual healing also taking place.  I now believe that if the accidental event in the orthodontist’s chair had not occurred, I would in all likelihood have had TMJ problems later in life (given the longstanding interior deterioration of my joints) but without the extraordinarily skilled, well-connected, and compassionate orthodontist to refer me to the right specialist for the right treatment. 

During the Exultet sung at the Church’s Easter Vigil, the Priest or Deacon sings (in an earlier translation) “O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which won for us so great a Redeemer.”  There was no sin involved in my jaw problem except mine in its aftermath, but I cannot help but think now what a “happy fault” it was that eventually brought me to such healing. 

The Lord Jesus knows that each of us carries “decades of damage” and that our interior life is scarred by numberless “traumas”---both only partially known, and certainly also largely unknown, to us.  As tempting as it is to oversimplify our spiritual predicament and attempt to justify ourselves by the small-souled, endless accusatory condemnations toward those who have hurt us, Christ invites us rather to trust in His divine benevolence---and trust in it enough to share it; by sharing His goodness to us, we shall see it multiplied before our very eyes.  In the process our souls will be expanded and our hearts will be healed.  The measure of our lives will become nothing less than the expanding Passion of Christ’s Cross and our healing the very extension of the wounded, glorified hands of the Divine Surgeon Risen from the dead.