After two priests suggested that I read Blessed Pope John Paul II’s Letter on Suffering, I thought, “OK. Perhaps I should read this thing.”
It’s very good and ridiculously pertinent to my current condition. So if you are suffering, I highly recommend it.
As I was reading the list of causes of suffering I realized that it applied to me:
Sacred Scripture is a great book about suffering. Let us quote from the books of the Old Testament a few examples of situations which bear the signs of suffering, and above all moral suffering:
the danger of death(5),
the death of one’s own children(6)
and, especially, the death of the firstborn and only son(7);
and then too: the lack of offspring(8) (This is me),
nostalgia for the homeland(9) (This is me),
persecution and hostility of the environment(10) (This is me in my workplace),
mockery and scorn of the one who suffers(11) (This is me in NY state and in a world of angry athiests),
loneliness and abandonment(12) (This is me);
and again: the remorse of conscience(13) (This is me – angry at myself over past sins),
the difficulty of understanding why the wicked prosper and the just suffer(14) (This is me),
the unfaithfulness and ingratitude of friends and neighbours(15) (This is me as many of my “friends” turned out not to be such good friends after all);
and finally: the misfortunes of one’s own nation(16) (ULTRA This is me…insert the HHS Mandate as our executive branch decides that I no longer am allowed to have religious liberty).
The letter goes on to say:
We could say that man suffers because of a good in which he does not share, from which in a certain sense he is cut off, or of which he has deprived himself. He particularly suffers when he a ought”—in the normal order of things—to have a share in this good and does not have it.
Word
People who suffer become similar to one another through the analogy of their situation, the trial of their destiny, or through their need for understanding and care, and perhaps above all through the persistent question of the meaning of suffering.
I guess that’s why all of my friends right now are also suffering from infertility… we are similar. My other friends who have bountiful families, flourishing from their fabulous fertility, just don’t have anything in common with me anymore.
Within each form of suffering endured by man, and at the same time at the basis of the whole world of suffering, there inevitably arises the question: why?
This is when suffering becomes unbearable… to ask the question, “why?” When my doctor can’t tell me the answer, I turn to God and ask him, “Why?”
Both questions are difficult, when an individual puts them to another individual, when people put them to other people, as also when man puts them to God. For man does not put this question to the world, even though it is from the world that suffering often comes to him, but he puts it to God as the Creator and Lord of the world. And it is well known that concerning this question there not only arise many frustrations and conflicts in the relations of man with God, but it also happens that people reach the point of actually denying God. For, whereas the existence of the world opens as it were the eyes of the human soul to the existence of God, to his wisdom, power and greatness, evil and suffering seem to obscure this image, sometimes in a radical way, especially in the daily drama of so many cases of undeserved suffering and of so many faults without proper punishment.
Which is why I don’t feel God’s presence. It’s why I feel pinned to the cross and think, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
In the midst of this great suffering and without the knowledge of WHY, I can only assume that God is not there in my life.
Thus the personal dimension of punishment is affirmed. According to this dimension, punishment has a meaning not only because it serves to repay the objective evil of the transgression with another evil, but first and foremost because it creates the possibility of rebuilding goodness in the subject who suffers.
So wait… two wrongs do make a right????
and… this lifetime of suffering is just “rebuilding goodness in” me? Ummm I don’ t think I want to be good if it means THIS amount of suffering.
It is the same when we deal with death. It is often awaited even as a liberation from the suffering of this life.
Which is why I’ve pondered taking up smoking… perhaps it will speed my exit from this life. (just kidding)
this suffering which is the separation, the rejection by the Father, the estrangement from God.
Which brings us back to the feelings of: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
(If you are following along or would like to reference the letter this can be found under #20. )
The very participation in Christ’s suffering finds, in these apostolic expressions, as it were a twofold dimension. If one becomes a sharer in the sufferings of Christ, this happens because Christ has opened his suffering to man, because he himself in his redemptive suffering has become, in a certain sense, a sharer in all human sufferings. 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 new meaning.This discovery caused Saint Paul to write particularly strong words in the Letter to the Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me: and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me”(62). Faith enables the author of these words to know that love which led Christ to the Cross. And if he loved us in this way, suffering and dying, then with this suffering and death of his he lives in the one whom he loved in this way; he lives in the man: in Paul. And living in him-to the degree that Paul, conscious of this through faith, responds to his love with love-Christ also becomes in a particular way united to the man, to Paul, through the Cross. This union caused Paul to write, in the same Letter to the Galatians, other words as well, no less strong: “But far be it from me to glory except in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world”(63).
This gives new meaning to being a part of the body of Christ! and I’m not sure I like it…
So wait, I as a member of Christ’s one and only church am a member of Christ’s body. So because I am a part of His body (metaphysically) and because His body suffered on the cross, that means that my body as part of his body suffers directly because of that? (Is that right?)
Why does my body have to suffer so much? Suzie and Johnny over there don’t seem to be suffering. They seem to be thriving quite nicely. Why do I seem to have an extra dose (or five) of this suffering?
(and under #23)
“More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been given to us”(76).
In doing this, the individual unleashes hope, which maintains in him the conviction that suffering will not get the better of him, that it will not deprive him of his dignity as a human being, a dignity linked to awareness of the meaning of life. And indeed this meaning makes itself known together with the working of God’s love, which is the supreme gift of the Holy Spirit. The more he shares in this love, man rediscovers himself more and more fully in suffering: he rediscovers the “soul” which he thought he had “lost”(77) because of suffering.
“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church”(78). And in another Letter he asks his readers: “Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?”(79)
Under 24.
In this Body, Christ wishes to be united with every individual, and in a special way he is united with those who suffer.
For, whoever suffers in union with Christ— just as the Apostle Paul bears his “tribulations” in union with Christ— not only receives from Christ that strength already referred to but also “completes” by his suffering “what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions”.
The sufferings of Christ created the good of the world’s redemption. This good in itself is inexhaustible and infinite. No man can add anything to it. But at the same time, in the mystery of the Church as his Body, Christ has in a sense opened his own redemptive suffering to all human suffering. In so far as man becomes a sharer in Christ’s sufferings—in any part of the world and at any time in history—to that extent he in his own way completes the suffering through which Christ accomplished the Redemption of the world.
It completes that suffering just as the Church completes the redemptive work of Christ. The mystery of the Church—that body which completes in itself also Christ’s crucified and risen body—indicates at the same time the space or context in which human sufferings complete the sufferings of Christ. Only within this radius and dimension of the Church as the Body of Christ, which continually develops in space and time, can one think and speak of “what is lacking” in the sufferings of Christ. The Apostle, in fact, makes this clear when he writes of “completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church”.
Under 26 And Christ through his own salvific suffering is very much present in every human suffering, and can act from within that suffering by the powers of his Spirit of truth, his consoling Spirit.
This is not all: the Divine Redeemer wishes to penetrate the soul of every sufferer through the heart of his holy Mother, the first and the most exalted of all the redeemed. As though by a continuation of that motherhood which by the power of the Holy Spirit had given him life, the dying Christ conferred upon the ever Virgin Mary a new kind of motherhood—spiritual and universal—towards all human beings, so that every individual, during the pilgrimage of faith, might remain, together with her, closely united to him unto the Cross, and so that every form of suffering, given fresh life by the power of this Cross, should become no longer the weakness of man but the power of God.
Ok – well, this must be part of the problem, because I have such a stinky relationship with his holy Mother. No matter what I do, it seems to remain more like a term paper about Mary rather than a relationship with her.* sigh *
And… “every form of suffering…should become no longer the weakness of man, but the power of God?”
huh? what does that mean?
The letter goes on to illustrate that after the suffering one asks the question of why, they get this answer:
The answer which comes through this sharing, by way of the interior encounter with the Master, is in itself something more than the mere abstract answer to the question about the meaning of suffering. For it is above all a call. It is a vocation. 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. Gradually, as the individual takes up his cross, spiritually uniting himself to the Cross of Christ, the salvific meaning of suffering is revealed before him. He does not discover this meaning at his own human level, but at the level of the suffering of Christ. At the same time, however, from this level of Christ the salvific meaning of suffering descends to man’s level and becomes, in a sense, the individual’s personal response. It is then that man finds in his suffering interior peace and even spiritual joy.
The person feels condemned to receive help and assistance from others, and at the same time seems useless to himself.
Faith in sharing in the suffering of Christ brings with it the interior certainty that the suffering person “completes what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions”; the certainty that in the spiritual dimension of the work of Redemption he is serving, like Christ, the salvation of his brothers and sisters. Therefore he is carrying out an irreplaceable service.
The name “Good Samaritan” fits every individual who is sensitive to the sufferings of others, who “is moved” by the misfortune of another.
a Good Samaritan is one who brings help in suffering,
A Good Samaritan is the person capable of exactly such a gift of self.
Under 30. He himself is the one who in each individual experiences love; he himself is the one who receives help, when this is given to every suffering person without exception. He himself is present in this suffering person, since his salvific suffering has been opened once and for all to every human suffering. And all those who suffer have been called once and for all to become sharers “in Christ’s sufferings”(98), just as all have been called to “complete” with their own suffering “what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions”(99). At one and the same time Christ has taught man to do good by his suffering and to do good to those who suffer. In this double aspect he has completely revealed the meaning of suffering.
Under 31
Precisely at this point the “revealing of man to himself and making his supreme vocation clear” is particularly indispensable.
The Cutest Me 