Modern cries for help, ancient answers

The McGrath Institute for Church Life (MICL) invited Norwegian Bishop Erik Varden to give a talk titled “Living with Wounds: The Passion in Theology and in Our Lives” on Wednesday, April 2 in Geddes Hall. Bishop Kevin Rhoades provided the introduction to the talk, which was attended by over 150 people and quickly became standing room only. 

Bp. Varden, a convert from Lutheranism, is a Trappist monk and the first modern Norwegian-born bishop of Trondheim. A Professor of Syriac, Monastic History, and Christian Anthropology at the Pontifical Athenaeum of Saint Anselm in Rome, he is also the author of several books, including the most recently published Healing Wounds: the 2025 Lent Book. 

According to Susan Coyne, the Assistant Director of Events and Administration for MICL, “Professor John Cavandini [the Director of MICL] met Bp. Varden at a conference in New York City in February 2023. After reading the Bishop’s book, Chastity, Professor Cavadini invited Bp. Varden to come to Notre Dame, and the Bishop was able to schedule the visit in March 2025.”

Bp. Varden began his talk by showing the audience a clip from Gracie Abrams’s February concert in Madrid. Abrams, in her song “Camden,” expressed her hopelessness and her belief that she is an open wound, singing, “All of me, a wound to close / But I leave the whole thing open / I just wanted you to know / I was never good at coping.” Bp. Varden used the song to illustrate the current generation’s “consciousness of being wounded [that] permeates our anxious times like a mist of sadness.” He then noted how striking it is that the Church affirms Christ’s wounded body on the Cross is where the wellspring of life is found.

It took the Church five centuries to refine her conceptual framework of the Incarnation before she felt comfortable enough to graphically depict the Crucifixion, Bp. Varden explained. However, he noted that in spite of the great care the Church took to fend off Arianism and its denial of Christ’s divinity, “We, too, like our predecessors in the faith in the fourth century, find it difficult to maintain these extreme opposites together, believing in Christ as fully God and fully man, and we tend to err on the side of his humanity.”

Bp. Varden explained that there are two consequences of our lapse into either implicit or explicit Arianism. The first consequence is that we tend to “fetishize our wounds” and woundedness, making them our identity and using them to cultivate anger. The second consequence is that we become ashamed of our woundedness and our wounds—we want to hide them or eliminate them outright. He went on to say that support for abortion, euthanasia, and even eugenics follows in the wake of these consequences.

The answer to our woundedness, Bp. Varden said, is the healing power of Christ’s wounds. “Wounds can be healed, and what is more, wounds can even become sources of healing, as we see in so many of the great high medieval representations of Christ, where the blood marks of Christ’s hands and feet and side are represented as flowers, as the flourishing of a new creation. So meditation on Christ’s wounds is more than devout exercise.”

“Meditation on Christ’s wounds,” said Bp. Varden, “is constructive revolt against serial fallacies. … The Gospel account shows wounds not just done away with but rendered glorious. The Gospel account of Christ’s appearances after the Resurrection showed him still carrying the wounds, but show, as in the encounter with Thomas, how his woundedness becomes a way of enlightenment and of healing for others.”

Bp. Varden pointed out the fact that the wounds the Church venerates and that we find healing in are real wounds: Christ’s wounds are a physical reality. “The source of Christian hope is not wishful thinking. The source of Christian hope is not pleasant pious platitudes. The source of Christian hope is the conviction that a transforming benevolence has saturated human suffering even in its most extreme manifestations, is saturating it now reaching right into the very depths of hell, and that no desolation, therefore, is final … By His wounds, we are healed … [and] our Time is literally crying out for it,”  Bp. Varden concluded. 

The floor was then opened for questions. Bp. Rhoades inquired as to how Bp. Varden would respond to the modern desire for miracles and deemphasis of suffering. Bp. Varden replied: “I think what we mustn’t forget is the possibility that healing comes. God’s intention is always healing. On that point, the Scriptures are unanimous in a complex way, but nonetheless … healing can come about not only through miracles … there is another form of healing that can come through the bearing on the wound, and that is why the Crucified remains the symbol of reference.”

To sum up his answer, Bp. Varden brought attention to the fact that the Christian call to bear the Cross is a call full of purpose, both for the individual and for others. He encouraged the audience to remind the world of the sense of suffering and the dignity of the patience suffering evokes.

When asked for his thoughts on the talk, Paul Quense, a freshman, told the Rover, “Bishop Varden’s talk spoke to the wounds of so many in this age. He pointed to Christ on the cross as divinity touching human suffering and how the Christian life must be approached through the mystery of suffering and not in spite of it. Varden emphasized a message of hope, as there is a certainty we can have in God that wounds can be healed and can become sources of healing.”

Lilian Lewen is a freshman history and philosophy major from Indianapolis. If you’d like to hear her ramble on about Thomistics or rant about Irish terriers and their troubled history with Notre Dame, email her at llewen01@saintmarys.edu.

Photo Credit: Irish Rover

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