by Chase Hawkins
As Job loses his wealth, livestock, health, and family, he slowly succumbs to the grasp of suffering – at one point even hating God. Because Job – a faithful man and a lover of God – loses everything, the Book of Job raises the question, “why do the good suffer?”
“Why do the good suffer?”
This is a question that many people grapple with in their lives. We often wonder, “How is suffering beneficial?” or, “Who would believe in a God that allows suffering?”
The Catholic Church teaches that suffering is necessary for salvation. However, suffering was not a part of God’s original plan for mankind. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church it reads,
“God does not want men to suffer and die. God’s original idea for man was paradise: life forever and peace between God and man and their environment, between man and woman” (CCC 374-379, 384, 400)
Despite this, it can still be incredibly difficult for us to see God’s redemption when our families are broken, our lives awry, our relationships unstable, or our health fading. There are many instances, however, of suffering in the New Testament. In the New Testament, we see that Jesus taught by example when it came to suffering.
In the Gospels, it is written that Jesus spent forty days and forty nights in the desert in order to defy temptation. The Gospel of Matthew reads, “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry” (Mt. 4:1-2).
We Catholics emulate this suffering and penitence each year with the season of Lent. Lent is a time of suffering and inner speculation leading up to Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection. We are called to suffer for over forty days. We’re called to abstain from meat every Friday in Lent. So what? What’s the point? Is it to make us feel better about ourselves? Not necessarily. In particular, it is a time in which we are called to live like Jesus in terms of prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and (I’ll add one of my own) suffering. In a special way, we emulate Jesus’ temptation and fasting in the desert by resisting temptation and fasting for the betterment of ourselves and our relationship to God. By suffering, we are made new through the resurrection of Jesus on Easter Sunday. With the renewal of our Baptismal Promises at the Easter Vigil, we are – in a sense – washed away once again of our original sin and reborn in the resurrection. Amidst the trumpets and the lights and the white flowers of Easter, we are refreshed after having suffered alongside Jesus in Lent.
Similarly, Jesus of course suffered during his Passion and death. Jesus was whipped, crowned with a crown of thorns, spat on, shoved, stabbed, humiliated, and hung limply on a cross to die. Again, what’s the point? Couldn’t God just have torn the veil between Heaven and Earth with His almighty power? It wasn’t that simple, of course. It’s important that Jesus suffered and died in order to tear the veil so that we too may come closer to God and His Son. But even that wasn’t as simple as we would ideally hope. Jesus even sweated blood in the Garden of Gethsemane as he agonized his upcoming death. “My Father,” Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, “if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39).
Jesus knows that suffering is not in the least easy. This is why He suffers alongside us in our trials and tribulations.
In C.S. Lewis’ novel Mere Christianity, he says the following about how the incarnation and suffering of Jesus help us in our own suffering:
"But unfortunately we now need God's help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all -- to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God's nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God's leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. God can share only what He has: this thing, in His own nature, He has not.
But supposing God became a man -- suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated [combined] with God's nature in one person -- then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in God's dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God's dying unless He dies; and He cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all.
I have heard some people complain that if Jesus was God as well as man, then His sufferings and death lose all value in their eyes, 'because it must have been so easy for Him'... The perfect submission, the perfect suffering, the perfect death were not only easier to Jesus because He was God, but were possible only because He was God. But surely that is a very odd reason for not accepting them? The teacher is able to form the letters for the child because the teacher is grown-up and knows how to write. That, of course, makes it easier for the teacher, and only because it's easier for him can he help the child. If it rejected him because 'it's easy for grown-ups' and waited to learn writing from another child who could not write itself, it would not get on very quickly. If I am drowning in a rapid river, a man who still has one foot on the bank may give me a hand which saves my life. Ought I to shout back 'No, it's not fair! You have an advantage! You're keeping one foot on the bank'? That advantage -- call it 'unfair' if you like -- is the only reason why he can be of any use to me. To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?"
Rather than complain about our suffering and tribulations, we are called to stand back up – like Jesus did on the road to Calvary, seen in the Stations of the Cross – and take up our cross and carry on. It may seem concerning that God tells us to just “suck it up” and move on. This, however, is not the case at all. We can find out what God truly means by looking, once again, to the Gospels. In Matthew, it reads:
“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for your selves. For my yoke is easy, and my burden light” (Mt. 11:25-30).
Jesus says that His yoke is “well-fitted”. This means that it fits each and every one of us, even though we are all different. We are called to take up Jesus’ yoke and carry it with Him. Jesus doesn’t stand on the cart and shout orders at us; rather, He is with us, on the other side of the yoke, helping us to carry the load.
Despite all of the unfortunate suffering in the world, we are each challenged to take up our sufferings, take up our individual cross and carry it with the help of Jesus. We are called to take Jesus’ yoke upon us and receive rest. As we suffer, it is important that we remember that God sent His Son to share in our suffering so that we might be able to find God amidst our suffering.
If your suffering seems too much to bear, remember:
“He said not,
‘Thou shall not be tempted’
‘Thou shall not be tried’
Or ‘Thou shall not suffer’
But He did say, ‘Thou shall not be overcome’…”
-Julian of Norwich
Challenge of the Week: Go to a local Catholic Church and pray the Stations of the Cross. Go to each station and offer up a different form of suffering in your life. No matter how large or how small, lay it down at Jesus’ feet as He carries the cross to Calvary. If you don’t have access to the Stations, you can look them up online and do the same.
St. James, ora pro nobis
St. Francis of Assisi, ora pro nobis
St. Margaret Clitherow, ora pro nobis
Dominus vobiscum!
Chawkins.
"How Deep the Father's Love For Us" by Kings Kaleidoscope
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1aeehlfpr4