“The human personality is formed to the extent that he develops a judgment about the experiences he has to live. Since the experience of pain is one of the most imposing, it can be said that the position before it is the same that man assumes before the global experience of his life and the problem it represents. From how a man positions himself before the problem of pain it is possible to understand how he positions himself before the problem of existence as a whole”.

These are words that my friend Davide Rondoni uses in the prologue of Letters from Pain (Cartas desde el dolor), by the French writer Emmanuel Mounier. I had the opportunity to reread it, and its epistolary naturalness invites one to empathize with the experience one has, rather than proposing to make a philosophical or psychological treatise on the pain itself.

In Venezuela one can experience not only the pain and sacrifice lived in the first person, but also the enormity of the injustice we witness on a daily basis. It would be very pretentious and short-sighted to think that we have world exclusivity in this field because I would like to refer to any experience of pain, even that provoked by the fact that things do not go as we think or imagine. However, Mounier’s words open up a very different approach to anesthesia, avoidance, denial, or voluntarism as the only ascent to healing.

What judgment do we make of the experiences we live through? What attitude do we take to the pain we experience in our own flesh or see in others?

“The measure of humanity is essentially determined in the relationship to the suffering and the suffering person. This applies both to the individual and to society. A society that is unable to accept suffering and is unable to contribute through compassion to that suffering being shared and carried within is a cruel and inhuman society. Society, however, cannot accept those who suffer and support them in their suffering if the individuals themselves are not capable of it and, on the other hand, the individual cannot accept the suffering of others if he personally is not capable of finding in suffering a meaning, a path of purification and maturation, a path of hope”.

These words of Pope Benedict SVI (Spe Salvi 38)  are not easy to digest; however, in Venezuela, there are many people who are looking all this pain and suffering in the face.

In the face of human degradation, many respond with gestures of fraternity, and injustice is fought with solidarity. The task is to be able to experience all this, to make these gestures known, and to educate people to be true protagonists in the construction of the common good.