Suffering: Living Our Crosses

By Ruth Pakaluk

Why must we suffer? What does it accomplish? The sin of Adam and Eve was to put their will above God’s. This is the essential sin —to prefer our will to God’s will. You can understand suffering as the medicine needed to right the underlying problem. If a bone breaks and begins to heal crooked, it must be broken again and set straight. Similarly, we need to uproot our own will and realign it with God’s. The experience of physical or spiritual suffering patiently endured for God’s sake is a most effective way of realigning our will correctly.

“There is no love without renunciation” (Forge 760). The Persons of the Trinity live a life of perfect and complete self-giving. Man made in God’s image is called to that same type of relationship. Self-giving did not hurt before the Fall. Now it hurts, but it is still our vocation, our essence as created in the “image of God.”

Let’s reflect on the different ways in which God asks us to suffer. There are of course disasters, such as a catastrophic illness, the untimely death of a loved one, accidents, and so on. Then there are disappointments in love: husbands who fail; relationships that fail; children who go astray; and parents and siblings who reject the faith. Perhaps most common are little sufferings that make up the day-to-day downward pull: tedium; minor aches and pains; irritations; cars that break down; soufflés that don’t rise; rain when you plan a picnic; and other things like these.

For disasters, a natural question is: Why did this happen to me? There is a good and bad sense in asking this question. The bad sense is to ask the question as if “I don’t deserve the suffering”—and someone else did. When you find yourself looking at things in that way, think rather about the millions of people who have suffered more and enjoyed less than you have. Rise above the natural inclination to self-pity. In contrast, the good sense of asking the question is to wonder: What does God want me to learn from this? What can I draw out from this experience? How can it bring me closer to God?

What is the point of suffering? We need to have faith that God brings good out of evil. We do believe this, but we should try to accept it at a deeper level. God really does bring the best out of the worst. Joseph was traded into slavery in Egypt, but God selected him as the chief steward of that empire. Moses was abandoned to die as an infant, yet God made him the liberator of Israel. The poor man Lazarus lived a life of destitution, but God lifted him up to the bosom of Abraham. Similarly, the tortures of the Cross gave way to the joy of the Resurrection. Of course we do not as yet see what we take on faith. But knowing as we do that the Resurrection is a fact, why don’t we trust God more? Why do we think we know better than God? “Listen to me, my child: you must be happy when people treat you badly and dishonor you, when many come out against you and it becomes the done thing to spit on you, because you are omnium peripsema, like the refuse of the world. It’s hard, it’s very hard. It is hard, until at last one goes to the tabernacle, seeing oneself thought of as the scum of the earth, like a wretched worm, and says with all one’s heart, ‘Lord, if you don’t need my good name, what do I want it for?’ Up to then even a child of God does not know what happiness is—up to that point of nakedness and self-giving. It is a self-giving of love, but it is founded on mortification, on sorrow,” (Forge, 803).

Did Christ ever not cure a sick person during His life on this earth? Usually he cured, but sometimes He did not: “and coming into his own country he taught them in their synagogue, so that they were astonished, and said, ‘Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?’ And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, ‘A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house.’ And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief” (Matt 13:54-58). What is different now? Do we lack faith? We should imitate the widow, whose son Christ raised (Luke 7:11); the leper who came up to Christ, kneeled down, and beseeched Him, “If you will, you can make me clean” (Mark 1:40); or the faith of that Centurion, or the tenacity of the Syro-Phoenician woman.

If God’s will is that we continue to suffer, we might wonder whether God has stopped paying attention to us. But He hasn’t: God knows what it is to suffer. He after all chose the Cross. God went out of His way to experience suffering worse than yours. Also, we know that His favorite person is Mary: look what that got her—certainly not a reprieve from suffering.

How can suffering be redemptive, as we believe? It is redemptive because God makes it so. We could not actually do anything for God unless He made it so. It helps to take one’s suffering to prayer: “There can be no doubt that for us who love Jesus, prayer is the great pain-reliever” (Forge, 756). Prayer is a ‘pain reliever’ both naturally and supernaturally.
A real form of suffering is when someone you love suffers. Christ, as He suffered, was beloved by His mother Mary, and also God the Father, God the Spirit. For whom is suffering harder—the one who suffers, or someone who loves the one who suffers? Think about this, and offer up whatever is hardest. Do not gloss over what is painful. Death is an indignity. It is something to be sad about: Jesus wept for Lazarus.

Finally, how can we help others suffer? We should, for our part, offer up sacrifices for them; and we should try to explain what it is to offer up suffering. In doing this, it helps to point to the Cross.