The answer is the cross of Jesus. Jesus reveals this love. In Eucharistic adoration, we gaze upon the Sacred Host, the Body of Christ present under the sign of bread, the Body born of the Virgin Mary which suffered on the Cross and is now glorified in heaven. The Eucharist is His Body given for us and His Blood poured out for us for the redemption of the world. The question of the meaning of suffering, in many ways an impenetrable question, finds an answer, above all, in the Passion of Jesus.
On the cross, Jesus not only embraced human suffering in an incomparable way, but also made suffering redemptive. He conquered evil with good. He accomplished our salvation from sin and death by His own suffering on the cross. In suffering voluntarily and innocently, Christ gives the answer to the question about suffering and its meaning. The Son of God strikes evil at its very root, conquering sin and death with the power of love. In His passion, Jesus took all human suffering upon Himself.
He gave it a new meaning. He used suffering to accomplish the work of salvation. He used it for good. His love transformed suffering so that this awful reality that is connected to evil might become a power for good.
So suffering now has a saving power. And that is how we, as Christians, can find meaning and purpose in suffering, what before we might have thought was totally useless. In the great apostolic letter of Pope St. And at the same time it has entered into a completely new dimension and a new order: it has been linked to love, … to that love which creates good, drawing it out by means of suffering, just as the supreme good of the Redemption of the world was drawn from the cross of Christ, and from that cross constantly takes its beginning.
So Jesus has not only redeemed us from sin and death, He has also redeemed suffering. This is exactly why St. This is the profound doctrine of salvific suffering: suffering that has a real and saving effect for us because Jesus gives it power by uniting it to his own suffering.
Someone might rightfully ask: why did Jesus have to suffer at all? This is a book all to itself. Simply put, God made a covenant with his chosen people, promising blessings or curses — life or death — depending on how his people kept this covenant Dt But they broke this covenant, repeatedly and seriously. Instead of justice, God chose mercy and decided to take these agreed-on covenant punishments on himself to show his unquestionable love for his people: no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends Jn When you are willing to suffer for someone, you clearly show your love for them.
But again, did Jesus really have to suffer and die on that cross? The short answer is no. There were many ways God could have chosen to repair the broken covenant with his people. But he chose to suffer and die on the cross so he could show us, unquestionably, just how much he loves us. So if you ever doubt that God loves you, simply look at a crucifix.
Suffering plays another important role. It tests, purifies and perfects our faith. That love always involves a sense of mutuality, reciprocity, of being vulnerable to the hurts of the other.
It so much depends on how you understand perfection. He made that reign of God present in his words and his deeds: touching the leper, dining with sinners, etc.
The suffering needs to be seen as an outcome; he got himself in trouble by the way he lived. Do these big theological ideas help us with our own concrete experiences of suffering? Two men and a boy are arrested. All the prisoners are forced to watch them be hanged. It takes him a long time to die. Where is God now? Wiesel never really explains what he means by that passage, but I think a Christian can read that and understand that God is in the suffering one.
Seeing God in the suffering means you approach them with reverence. But you have to realize that this is especially sacred ground. You have to tread lightly. Pastoral workers, whether priests or lay people, are human beings. Sometimes pastors want to have quick answers for people, rather than sit with them. Even in preaching, we want to sound convincing and like we know something. Otherwise, why are we up there?
But sometimes you have to let your own vulnerability come out, whether at a funeral or where a child is dying. We need to reflect on what our words convey about who God is. What kind of image of God is underneath what I am saying? Or that God is a master software programmer. He knows all the on and off switches and exactly what circuits to use.
He can never be the originator of something evil. Such a God could only be despised. If God is not the orginator of our plight, then who is? This is the second great assumption. The blood and tears of humanity often originate in human and natural causes.
It is not only those monstrous tyrants, who sent whole nations into Concentration Camps or who let 30 million farmers die of hunger. No, it is also us "little people" who cause suffering and contribute daily to the plight of this world. Sometimes we do this in more remarkable ways, like when a small shop owner refuses to serve Jews at the counter, or in more common situations, like when we act harmfully and competitively towards our colleagues.
We are free to destroy our fellow human beings and our surrounding environment. A black fog of sin has encroached upon and silently poisoned all that exists. Even natural catastrophes like tsunamis, earthquakes, and pandemics somehow in a deeper sense seem to mysteriously mirror the atrocities which human beings inflict upon each other as if it were nothing.
People ask themselves: How on earth did we manage to spoil and destroy all the good, true, and beautiful things that we find in creation? It is easily imaginable that the creator of all things may now struggle to recognize his own creation. How did we lose paradise? Well, God did not create us as puppets; He made us in his own image, and therefore gifted us with an ability that only God and we humans have: a nearly boundless capacity to choose and act freely.
What a risk! This kind of freedom can turn you into a murderer. But God's plan for us with regards to our freedom is different: "God would like us to decide in favor of our happiness; we should choose God freely, love him above all things, do good and avoid evil insofar as we are able. Would it not be better if God would send the great flood one more time so that this corrupt humanity would drown alongside his suffering earth once and for all?
God is not like that. The YOUCAT 33 says, "Faith holds fast to this promise, although the experience of suffering and evil in the world may make people wonder whether God is really loving.
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