Life experience will tell us that prayer does not erase suffering and hardships. In fact, the great irony is that prayer often calls us more deeply into them! As we grow in our contemplative practices, a common fruit is a keener awareness of God who is present always, everywhere, and in all things. As this consciousness of the truly omnipresent God progressively awakens, we start and finding the courage to seek God in the places we have always been the moist afraid to look – the hurting places, the painful places, the confusing places, the hard places. The Church demonstrates this wisdom with stark clarity by displaying the image of the suffering, crucified Christ before every altar – oh, that we may not let the sight become so familiar as to blind us to its meaning and power! This awareness of God’s Presence in the suffering is not a call to create or condone it, but simply to be honest and accepting of the fact that these experiences are at times woven into the very fabric of reality, whether we would have it be so or not, and to recognize the hurts as places into which the immense love of God can readily flow and be revealed. When we meet suffering with the welcoming stance of contemplation, we can recognize how intertwined is the heart of God with the heart of creation, that all the suffering of the world is God’s suffering, and be ready to meet God and be transformed there.