HOW SHOULD THE CHRISTIAN RESPOND TO PERSONAL SUFFERING?
My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made
perfect in weakness.
2 Corinthians 12:9a
Have you have been waging a battle against forces that threaten you and your family? Have you prayed for healing or release from your troubles but without received the answer you desire? Do not think that God has not heard your prayers or does not care about your suffering. Instead, be open to the understanding that God has another plan for your life. Be assured that Jesus, the Savior who loves you and who died that you might live with Him throughout all eternity, will give you the strength of faith to endure your ordeal of suffering. You must claim the promise our Lord made to us through Saint Paul that He will not give you more than you can bear: None of the trials which have come upon you is more than a human being can stand. You can trust that God will not let you be put to the test beyond your strength, but with any trial will also provide a way out by enabling you to put up with it (1 Corinthians 10:13, NAB). Paul suffered from an undisclosed affliction and prayed three times for the Lord to heal him. The third time he prayed for healing, Jesus told Paul: My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9a, NAB), after which Paul accepted his suffering and counted it toward his salvation, later writing to the Roman Christians: The Spirit himself joins with our spirit to bear witness that we are children of God. And if we are children, then we are heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ, provided that we share his suffering, so as to share his glory (Romans 8:16-17, NJB). Like God's servant in the Book of Job, have faith that God has a plan for you despite your suffering.
As you experience trials, unite your suffering, like Saint Paul, both emotionally and physically, with the suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ. Take courage from Pope Saint John Paul II's words of comfort: "God is always on the side of suffering" (Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II, page 66). God the Son demonstrates His love and mercy by the fact that He freely chose to suffer as the means of His plan of redemption for humanity's salvation. It was the reason He spoke the words of Psalm 22:1 from the cross: "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me"; these are the words of all those who suffer in this life. Those very words are proof that He chose to unite our suffering to His! What greater demonstration could there be to the depth and sincerity of His love for us? He loved us in His suffering to His last breath as the Apostle John testified: He loved his own in the world, and he loved them to the end (John 13:1b, NAB).
Why would a just and loving God allow suffering? When God created humans to "know, love, and serve" Him, He desired a purity of love that cannot be exercised without the human freedom to choose to love or not to love (cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church # 1604). With this freedom of choice comes the decision to love expressed in obedience of faith or not to love, expressed in disobedience. With the decision not to love God and in our actions not to show His love to others comes the possibility of increasing sin in the world. Sin in the world results in suffering for the guilty and the innocent, leading to sickness, mental anguish, pain, and even death. God did not create evil (Wisdom 2:23-24; Sirach 15:11-20). Evil is the result of the willful turning away from God and His infinite love. However, God did allow for the possibility of sin and the resulting evil so that the greatest of human good, genuine love, could be manifested in humankind. The negative result of that freedom of choice is the possibility of sin and suffering.
In the Old Testament Book of Job, God exposes us to the incomprehensibility of suffering when even the good and the innocent must endure pain in this life resulting from sin in the world. The depth of the injustice and gravity of the innocent's suffering is fully revealed in the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth when God the Son united Himself to humanity's suffering. There is no more complete answer as to why a just God allows the innocent to suffer other than the answer of what God offered up to humanity in the saving work of Jesus Christ. In addressing human suffering, Pope John Paul II wrote: "Christ does not explain in the abstract the reasons for suffering, but before all else, he says: Follow me! Come! Take part through your suffering in this work of saving the world, a salvation achieved through my suffering! Through my cross!'" (Salvifici Doloris, 26). In God the Son, the dimension of the suffering of the innocent is revealed to be redemptive suffering, transformed and redeemed through the cross of Jesus Christ. Reflecting on this mystery, Pope Saint John Paul II wrote: "Christ has opened His suffering to man ... Man, discovering through faith the redemptive suffering of Christ, also discovers in it his own sufferings; he rediscovers them through faith, enriched with a new content and meaning" (Salvifici Doloris, 20).
To be called to suffering in this life is to be initiated into the mystery of Christ's Passion. It is to being called to cooperate in the redemption of humanity. The Catechism of the Catholic Church assures us that we can all become collaborators with God's plan of salvation (CCC 307): "... to human beings God even gives the power of freely sharing in his providence by entrusting them with the responsibility of subduing' the earth and having dominion over it (Genesis 1:26-28). God thus enables men to be intelligent and free agents to complete the work of creation, to perfect its harmony for their own good and that of their neighbors. Though often unaware collaborators with God's will, they can also enter deliberately into the divine plan by their actions, prayers, and sufferings. They then fully become God's fellow workers' to advance the cause of His Kingdom (1 Corinthians 3:9; 1Thessalonians 3:2; Colossians 4:11)." We can become collaborators with God's plan of salvation when we unite our sufferings with those of Christ and offer up our prayers for the salvation of our neighbors, our communities, and the world. Our suffering offered up to Christ places us at the pivot point of the history of man. We stand at the side of the suffering Jesus who gave Himself up, Body and Blood, pain, and tears for the salvation of the world.
Our suffering also places us in a unique proximity to His mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. She is our example of the model Christian, who also, as prophesied, offered up her suffering with her son and Savior, as prophesied by Simeon in Luke 2:33-35. The Church addresses this unique opportunity to participate in Christ's sacrifice by uniting our suffering to His: "The cross is the unique sacrifice of Christ, the one mediator between God and men (1 Timothy 2:5).' But because in his incarnate divine person, he has in some way united himself to every man, the possibility of being made partners, in a way known to God, in the paschal mystery' is offered to all men. He calls his disciples to take up [their] cross and follow [him]' (Matthew 16:24), for Christ also suffered for [us], leaving [us] an example so that [we] should follow in his steps.' (1 Peter 2:21). In fact, Jesus desires to associate his redeeming sacrifice with those who were to be its first beneficiaries. This is achieved supremely in the case of his mother, who was associated more intimately than any other person in the mystery of his redemptive suffering [see Luke 2:35]" (Catechism of the Catholic Church # 618).
Pope Saint John Paul II defined human suffering as "a great test not only of physical strength but also spiritual strength" (Crossing the Threshold of Hope, page 25). Saint Paul understood this testing and the necessity to unite personal suffering to the suffering of Christ for the sake of the redemption of humankind when he wrote to the Christians at Colossus: It makes me happy to be suffering for you now, and in my own body to make up all the hardships that still have to be undergone by Christ for the sake of His body, the Church, of which I was made a servant with the responsibility towards you that God gave to me (Colossians 1:24, NAB; bold added for emphasis). Paul was not implying that Jesus' suffering was insufficient. To the contrary, Christ's suffering was wholly and completely sufficient. Instead, Paul was acknowledging that, as the battle against sin continues and the resulting suffering from sin continues, whenever a Christian offers up his personal suffering united with Jesus' suffering, a mystical union occurs that works toward the unceasing call to salvation in the world. The Son of God willingly suffered to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, the Catholic Church. And anyone who continues in Christ's work and takes up the cross of our Lord must share in the suffering of that cross (Matthew 10:38; 16:24; Mark 8:34; 10:21; Luke 9:23; 14:27). In suffering for the Kingdom of our Lord, we must unite our suffering to Christ's. In that struggle, some of us will be called to physical trials and others to emotional suffering and persecution for the sake of the Kingdom because, as Saint Rose of Lima wrote: "Apart from the cross there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven."
Therefore, human suffering does not have to be in vain. There is the promise of an eternal reward for faithful endurance in submitting to the will of God and the opportunity to cooperate in God's plan of salvation. To encourage the Christians of Corinth who were suffering persecution because of their faith, Saint Paul wrote: For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow into our lives; so too does the encouragement we receive through Christ. So, if we have hardships to undergo, this will contribute to your encouragement and your salvation; if we receive encouragement, this is to gain for you the encouragement which evokes you to bear with perseverance the same sufferings as we do. So, our hope for you is secure in the knowledge that you share the encouragement we receive, no less than the sufferings we bear (2 Corinthians 1:5-7, NAB).
This is the Pascal mystery. In our suffering, we behold the risen and glorified Christ as we take our part in the New Creation. We are hounded and wounded by those sufferings that are still linking us to the old creation, which is still held by the last threads of sin, suffering, and death. Our suffering united with Christ together with our prayers can work toward the salvation of those with whom we come in contact when we share His message of salvation in love amid our suffering. Our sufferings united to Christ can free us from the penance due as a consequence of our confessed sins, and it also strengthens our faith and the depth of our imaging Christ in our daily lives. All suffering united to Christ's sufferings counts to the good for us and others in the human family.
Saint Paul, who experienced intense personal suffering that eventually led to his martyrdom, wrote with confidence from his prison cell about God's plan for his life: all in accordance with my most confident hope and trust that I shall never have to admit defeat, but with complete fearlessness I shall go on, so that now, as always, Christ will be glorified in my body, whether by my life or my death. Life to me, of course, is Christ, but then death would be a positive gain (Philippians 1:20, NAB). But what we must never do in our suffering is to despair. Despite all his suffering and persecutions, Paul never despaired. Despair is a sin, for when we fall into despair, we no longer acknowledge confidence in God's love and His plan for our lives. Despair sins against the theological virtue of hope.
Through our rebirth into the family of God through the Sacrament of Baptism and through Christ infusing us with His life in the Most Holy Eucharist, when the believer receives the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Christ, a Christian is mystically united into the divine life of Christ. This mystical union changes the whole of the believer's life, including his sufferings and death, which are mystically united to Christ living in and glorified the Christian (see Romans 14:8; 1 Corinthians 6:20). Our earthly suffering allows us a unique intimacy with our Savior in those hours when His love for us was most visible. When God calls us, we must embrace our suffering as though we are embracing Him and dare to repeat the words of Saint Paul: It is, then, about my weaknesses that I am happiest of all to boast, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me; and that is why I am glad of weaknesses, insults, constraints, persecutions, and distress for Christ's sake. For it is when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:9b-10, NJB). May our loving and merciful God bless you and keep you in the arms of the Savior who loved you to the end.
References and resources:
Catechism of the Catholic Church [CCC #s 307, 1604, 1508, 1521]
Making Sense Out of Suffering, P. Kreeft
New American Bible
New Jerusalem Bible
Salvifici Doloris [On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering], Pope John Paul II
The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis
The Nature of Good and Evil, D. von Hildebrand
Crossing the Threshold of Hope, Pope John Paul II
Other documents in the
Documents section of Agape Bible Study about suffering that may interest you:
Was it God's Plan That
Christ Should Suffer and Die for the Salvation of Man?
Did Jesus Have to Suffer
to Save Mankind?.
Michal E Hunt, Copyright © 2005; revised 2021 Agape Bible Study. Permissions All Rights Reserved.