Bishop Varden Burdened by Therapeutic Culture
Bishop Varden’s episcopal consecration in 2020 was postponed because he was granted a period of leave to recover his strength from exhaustion.
Religion or Life Coaching?
Bishop Varden believes that pain “belongs to the human condition and cannot be dissolved by rational arguments.”
Christian Faith does not seek to justify suffering or pretend it does not exist. Instead, it places suffering before God with reverence, acknowledging its gravity without turning it into an absolute.
Monsignor Varden's central idea is that humanity is wounded, yet not defined by its wounds. “The human condition,” he said, “is a painful condition, but not a definitive one.”
Victimism Is a Dead End
Suffering may condition life, but it does not exhaust its meaning or abolish freedom, Bishop Varden said. The cross, he added, is not a symbol of passive resignation, but “a place of radical interior freedom.”
In accepting suffering without renouncing the Father’s will, Christ demonstrates that even in circumstances that appear to paralyze the human person, “a free and fully human response remains possible.”
Bishop Varden emphasized that Christian Faith does not promise the healing of every wound or guarantee happy endings according to human expectations: “Some fractures endure, yet they are not beyond the reach of grace.”
Christianity proclaims not merely an all-powerful God who suppresses suffering, but “a God who shares it, bears it, and transforms it into a source of healing.”
Christ: “You Will Be Repaid at the Resurrection of the Just”
Bishop Varden claimed that redemption is not merely a future promise: “It is a real event already accomplished, whose fruits unfold gradually in time.”
Entrusting pain to God - handing over what cannot be understood or resolved - can open a “path of healing” that is often slow and silent, yet real.
The bishop himself assured that he has seen "how deep wounds, lived in this way, become unexpected sources of good."
Picture: Erik Varden © wikipedia, CC BY-SA, #newsFvwhaayfev