The Christian Meaning of Suffering
What St. Edith Stein called the “science of the Cross” is a great mystery that becomes less obscure with the light offered by Christ’s Passion. Broadly speaking, we can all identify with these words: “The meaning of sorrow is the consequence of our meaning of life. One can face that suffering when it’s borne for something or someone. It is in love that it finds its meaning.” The most relevant question is knowing why and for love of whom.
These words of St. Josemaria capture Christian wisdom on this question: “What does suffering matter if we suffer to console, to please God our Lord, in a spirit of reparation, united to him on his Cross; in a word: if we suffer for Love?” The lack of being in tune with the pained and grateful heart of Christ is a serious obstacle to living with depth the Christian meaning of suffering. After all, the terrible experience of suffering can present three advantages: an opportunity for purification, a point of encounter for abandoning ourselves trustingly to God, and an opportunity for co-redemption with Christ. It is in this last one that the greatest contribution of Christianity lies. The other two elements, purification and abandonment, comprise a great aid in the acceptance of suffering, but they turn out to be insufficient to love as Jesus does those who, as we have just seen, are identified with him.
Indeed, the wisdom of the ancient Greeks indicated the purifying value of contradictions, even from a merely human point of view. Moreover, as the Old Testament makes clear in the Book of Job, we know that our crosses, sometimes as unexpected as they are incomprehensible, offer us an excellent opportunity to abandon ourselves trustingly in a loving divine providence. The Christian perspective assumes and moves beyond these two insights, already present in Greek and Jewish wisdom. Thanks to that new vision revealed to us by Christ, we can discover in pain “not a heartless determinism, but the loving hand of our Father of Heaven, who blesses us with the loveable demands of the Cross.” It is urgent, then, to go deeper into the opportunity that all the baptized enjoy to transform our sufferings into an occasion of co-redeeming with Christ, helping him to console God the Father and to save souls.
According to Church doctrine, we are called to participate and collaborate in the work of Redemption. But, practically, what does this collaboration entail? What does it mean, as St. Peter indicates (see 1 Pt 3:14), that the Christian is called to share in his sufferings? In what sense can St. Paul claim that he makes up in his flesh “what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Col 1:24). In my last book, I attempted to respond to those questions, wanting to show that our suffering can alleviate the sufferings that Christ offers to console the Father and save souls. In a strict sense, we cannot do anything today to make the flogging that Jesus received during the scourging at the pillar hurt any less. Nor can we help him carry the weight of the Cross on his way to Calvary as Simon of Cyrene did twenty centuries ago (see Mt 27:32). On the other hand, we can lighten the suffering that our sins, happening in the present, cause him. For this reason, St. John Paul II puts it like this: “In this dimension— the dimension of love—the Redemption which has already been completely accomplished is, in a certain sense, constantly being accomplished.”
In this case, I’ll leave aside the theological ins and outs and confine myself to telling an anecdote. I still remember something a family man I know said in passing during a meal. It stayed in my memory, perhaps because it helped me understand that, when it comes to sacrificing ourselves for love of the Lord, we can be inspired just as we would for any human love. That good father had a very hard time getting up in the morning, because he worked late hours. Besides, ever since he was little, he had always found it hard to get up. His mind felt foggy every morning; to be in any condition to face another day, he needed several cups of coffee. However, when it came to his love for his children, without thinking anything of it at all, he would say with great conviction that it was a real sacrifice for him not to get up at night when he heard one of his little children crying.
This is how our nature “works.” We don’t generally spare any effort when it comes to easing the pain of those we love. Getting up in the middle of the night will never be pleasant, except in helping a child to recover from a nightmare. No sane person loves suffering as an end in itself. But sacrifice can be chosen with pleasure as a means of contributing to the happiness of someone we love. Only thus is it understandable that the saints can love pain despite the natural dread it produces. St. Josemaria, for instance, contends that suffering gives him “joy and peace,” because he feels “so much desire for reparation”: love made him “rejoice in suffering.” Jesus, too, in Gethsemane, felt “sorrowful and troubled” (Mt 26:37), but his love for the Father and for us gave him the strength necessary to undertake and consummate the Passion. If we imitate him, our suffering, too, will be made light. The Lord does not delight in our suffering as such: indeed, with empathy, he feels it as his own. He only wishes, for our own good, that we should love him. Our willing sacrifice consoles him to the degree that it’s an expression of love.
Moreover, sacrificing for the good of another person makes us love that person more. In the end, that is one of the reasons good parents love their children so much: because they’ve spent so many years taking compassion on their neediness and therefore sacrificing so much for them. At bottom, love and pain are two realities that benefit from one another. There is between them a sort of feedback mechanism. Love makes any sacrifice more bearable, and suffering to make someone we love happy brings us to love them even more.
This human truth takes on a much deeper meaning from the Christian point of view. “Love makes suffering fruitful and suffering deepens love.” Since sacrificial devotion is usually preceded by compassion, we also, like so many saints who have gone before us, will love the Lord madly if, when we meditate on his Passion, we feel his love and pain. Compassion for his sorrowing heart will be the best spur to our own generosity. For love of him, perhaps without feeling like it but with pleasure, we will go all out to fulfill with the greatest possible perfection the little duties of each instant.
Excerpt from Esparza – Is Christ Still Suffering?
Photo by Adam Custer on Unsplash
