A reader writes:
Why do some of us seem to suffer so much? I have a friend suffering a horrible loss, and they already have suffered other horrible losses in life. Why them?
And why doesn’t suffering seem to be balanced among us? I didn’t do anything to deserve what I have. I’m no better. Why do they suffer so much?
A friend sent me something written by Father Most, but it’s not resonating with me. I found something else on EWTN and it didn’t either. Maybe, suffering isn’t for us to understand, but for us to try to shoulder some of the burden for each other.
It seems to me that suffering is something we are to live more than to understand. Or perhaps another way of saying it is that the only hope we have of understanding or finding glory in suffering is to go through it with Christ rather than try to master it with our mere intellect. Suffering is not a subject or a topic. It is the interior shape of the life of Christ crucified, but also the gateway (so he tells us) into eternal ecstasy and joy with him. I have no idea how that can be, but the longer I spend time in Him, the more it seems to be the Way of Things.
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6 Responses
The only thing that I can think of is that suffering somehow brings us closer to Christ. In suffering, we become more Christ like. This is not an articulate answer, but it’s all that I can think of.
Everyone gets a “backpack of suffering” to carry with them. It’s the human condition. To ask why some seem to carry more than others is a question really about statistical modeling and why some people in our lives really do seem to attract more chaos and entropy than others. Underneath that is the basic foundational reality that, in the Buddhist formulation, “to live is to suffer.” The radical and revolutionary revelation of Jesus was to map the Divinity on to human suffering, to join with us in our suffering, to say that the suffering itself was not the point or the end, but rather love. In my experience, that is how Jesus redeems suffering – He doesn’t make it go away (that would make us less than human). Rather, to paraphrase Paul Claudel “He infuses [our suffering] with His presence.” As my own pastor said when describing a time in his early vocation when he was hospitalized from severe illness but still trying to pray his breviary and the sister/nurse came in and took the book out of his hands, saying “your sickness is your prayer.” How can we model a posture of going through life’s many sufferings in a way that doesn’t try to eliminate them (one way of thinking about modern consumerist capitalism) but that allows them to serve as a path toward greater compassion for ourselves and others, toward greater union/communion, toward a solidarity informed by empathy?
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5Wl1jQr61IMY3fIwR58qFK?si=GXvHnHOqSOKxYfAsy7RC9A&context=spotify%3Ashow%3A74FZujxSF1OLZIryXDhuIJ
This is a pretty Catholic sermon about suffering, given by a Protestant pastor. I needed to hear it.
The above sermon is: “Peace in the Storms”
Francis Chan teachings
Because suffering isn’t just the consequence of the fall; it’s the stacked consequences of each generation’s choices–where people are born; where they die; what is poisoned and what is not in the landscape; and so many millions of billions of other crucial facts, all being affected by grace and by nature, by sin and by sanctity, by the choices of those who came before (fetal alcohol syndrome; family trees; etc.) and by our own choices.
Suffering or lack of suffering in any one life is the product of all those previous choices. The sanctity of one person can heal and bless the lives of billions; the sin of one person can burn and blight the lives of billions. Our choices have consequences; so did those of the generation before us; so did those of the generation before them; and so on back to the beginning.
God, insisting as He does on free will because it’s the only path to true sons and daughters, true lovers, permits it all, puts boundaries where His beneficence and wisdom say, intervenes, but does not violate.
>It seems to me that suffering is something we are to live more than to understand. Or perhaps another way of saying it is that the only hope we have of understanding or finding glory in suffering is to go through it with Christ rather than try to master it with our mere intellect
I understand the spirit behind this statement. I have a deadly disease with no cure
But in the current social and political climate in this country, this idea of suffering will not be understood in context. A lot of people in this country are willing to inflict suffering on others deliberately, and maliciously. Diabolical Christian leaders are supporting cruelty by abusing the ideal of suffering to justify political ends.
The idea of suffering is simply stood on its end and twisted to evil aims. Let us destroy all social safety nets. Let us destroy solidarity, because it mitigates suffering. After all, if suffering is good, then cruelty is divine.. and anything that mitigates human suffering is evil
There is something like needless suffering. This should not need explanation, but we don’t live in normal times.