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By Mack Winholtz

A time of suffering comes to every life. It may come in the form of a serious illness or the death of a loved one; in the ending of a relationship that has been central to our lives; in the unraveling of a vocation to which we deeply aspired; or it may come in the form of natural disaster or war. When this passage of suffering comes to our lives it helps to have guides who have traveled that path before us, and whose lives and words can help show us the way.

Following are brief stories of five such people who, as a result of World War II, faced unavoidable suffering or felt compelled by conscience to take actions that led to their suffering. A time of suffering represents a critical juncture in our lives because, depending on how we respond to it, suffering can shadow our lives with sorrow, bitterness and despair.

In July of 1942, John Griffith, the twenty- year- old son of a Methodist minister, was arrested by the FBI for refusing to register for the draft. Believing that war is contrary to the teachings of Jesus, John vowed to act in accord with his conscience come what may. When the jail door clanged shut behind him, John recalls, "I felt peaceful and happy."
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> Transcript of KCOB interview with Griffith

Or, as the lives of these five people show, suffering can be a catalyst for spiritual transformation-evoking a person's inner capacity for courage, compassion, integrity, love and even joy.
In his book New Seeds of Contemplation the Trappist monk Thomas Merton writes: "Spiritual joy ignores suffering or laughs at it or even exploits it to purify itself of its greatest obstacle, selfishness. Pain can serve him as another opportunity of asserting-and tasting-his liberty . . . Pain cannot touch this highest joy-except to bring it an accidental increase of purity by asserting the soul's freedom." Despite the diversity of their backgrounds and circumstances, the lives of these five individuals seem to offer confirmation of Merton's words.
Mack Winholtz was a professor of sociology at Park University until his retirement in 2003.

William Roberts, born to Episcopalian missionaries in China, was a sophomore at Yale when, acting on conscience, he refused to register for the draft. His letters from prison trace his deepening resolve to let his actions be guided solely by an inner sense of "basic honesty." Amid imprisonment he was able to affirm, "I am a free man."
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Father Maximilian Kolbe was head of a large monastery and publishing center in Poland at the time of the German invasion in 1939. Along with thousands of other priests and Brothers, Kolbe was arrested by the Gestapo. Kolbe's fellow prisoners at Auschwitz were struck by his inner peace and selfless giving to others-ultimately giving his life.
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Although he had been blind since age eight, Jacques Lusseyran decided at age sixteen to organize a group of students to print and distribute an underground newspaper in resistance to the German occupation of France. The inner stillness and joy he had cultivated through years of blindness sustained him through his subsequent imprisonment at Buchenwald.
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The diary and letters of Etty Hillesum trace the inner transformation of a young Dutch Jewish woman amidst the terror of German military occupation and her time in the "transit" concentration camp at Westerbork. In this time she came to the realization that, as Thomas Merton put it, "the real journey in life is interior."
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