When Adam and Eve fell from grace, the Lord God said to them, “Cursed be the ground because of you! In toil shall you eat its yield all the days of your life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you as you eat of the plants of the field. by the sweat of your face shall you get bread to eat, until you return to the ground, from which you were taken; for you are dirt, and to dirt you shall return.” (Genesis 3: 17-19) Note that the Lord God did not curse Adam and Eve, but rather the ground. There is a tendency to think of work and suffering as punishment and condemnation. Yet, as obvious as it seems, this notion may need a paradigm shift to view it from the lenses of God our Father. Suffering while seeming like a punishment, is actually corrective, restorative, salvific, and redemptive. A punitive punishment punishes the offender and emphasizes the offender’s guilt and shame. Restorative justice helps the person committing the offense to find pathways to assume responsibility for the offense and to repair the damage through mutual dialogue and understanding. The suffering was actually a way for Adam and Eve to make good use of their time – they were idling about and thus allowed a space for the serpent’s seductions and distortions to come into play. The ensuing suffering also gave Adam and Eve a greater appreciation for the gift of God in the form of creation, that they had been placed as exclusive stewards of. The suffering in turn reconnected them to their Maker and exhorted them to place Him as the centre of their lives, without this suffering, they would have forgotten their Maker. The suffering was God’s way of letting Adam and Eve know that he cared for and loved them and was seeking an active way to repair the relationship between them through restorative justice.
Suffering and its presence often leaves the average Catholic confused and overwhelmed. Despite their trust in God, without a deeper excavation of the redemptive purpose of suffering and without uniting their suffering to the Lord’s own, the pain and the sorrow that they encounter may inevitably get the best of these once faithful Catholics. Yet suffering can only make sense and have purpose when the suffering offer up up their suffering in union with the Suffering Sovereign – Christ. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “By his passion and death on the cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering: it can henceforth configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive passion.” (CCC 1505). It may befuddle us that the Saints, such as St. Therese of Liseux and St Padre Pio actually rejoiced in suffering. St Padre Pio would often say, “O what precious moments these are. It is a happiness that the Lord gives me to relish almost always in moments of affliction. At these moments, more than ever, when the whole world troubles and weighs on me, I desire nothing other than to love and to suffer. Yes my father, even in the midst of so much suffering I am happy because it seems as if my heart is beating with Jesus’ heart.”
An examination of the etymology of the word “redemption”, reveals that the word “redemption” means, a “deliverance from sin,” from Old French redemcion (12c.) and directly from Latin redemptionem (nominative redemptio) “a buying back, releasing, ransoming”. This is significant for we often overlook the meaning of setting free that redemption entails. (Mother Angelica) To say that suffering redeems is a cause for us to sit up and pay attention, for it means that in our suffering, we are being liberated from the shackles of the slavery caused by sin and transgression. The role of suffering is thus not as a means to torture or enslave, but on the contrary to bring about the consolation of the Lord. In 2 Corinthians 1: 5, 6, St. Paul states, “indeed, as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so, through Christ, does our consolation overflow. When we are made to suffer, it is for our consolation and salvation.”
There is a deeper meaning to suffering. in John 3:16, we read, “For God so loved the world, that he sent his only begotten Son, that whosoever shall believe in him, shall not perish but have everlasting life.” These, according to St. Pope John Paul II in his apostolic letter, Salvifici Doloris, “introduce us to the heart of God’s Salvific work” – To a fallen and broken world, the Lord God has given his Son, so as to liberate it completely from the slavery under evil. The Son is given not as a one-time only limited balm, but as a complete redemption for the transgressions of sin throughout eternity. This liberation and ransom is achieved through Jesus’ own suffering in his passion and on the cross. “God gives his only-begotten Son so that man “should not perish” and the meaning of these words ” should not perish” is precisely specified by the words that follow: “but have eternal life”. Man ” perishes” when he loses “eternal life”. The opposite of salvation is not, therefore, only temporal suffering, any kind of suffering, but the definitive suffering: the loss of eternal life, being rejected by God, damnation. The only-begotten Son was given to humanity primarily to protect man against this definitive evil and against definitive suffering. In his salvific mission, the Son must therefore strike evil right at its transcendental roots from which it develops in human history. These transcendental roots of evil are grounded in sin and death: for they are at the basis of the loss of eternal life. The mission of the only-begotten Son consists in conquering sin and death. He conquers sin by his obedience unto death, and he overcomes death by his Resurrection.” (St. Pope John Paul II) In the eschatological dimension, Christ has destroyed and conquered death and and has struck evil at its roots. For the saved, the eschatological dimension of definitive suffering is completely wiped out by the death and resurrection of Jesus. As a result of Christ’s salvific redemption, humanity lives in the hope of that definitive union with God. In the temporal dimension, Christ draws near to the suffering of humanity. In his agony at Gethesamane, in his horrific passion, nailed onto the cross, Christ took on all of humanity’s suffering upon himself.
St Paul wrote extensively about his sufferings in his epistles. In Galatians 6: 17, he writes, “From now on, let no one make troubles for me; for I bear the marks of Jesus on my body.” The reference to the marks of Jesus is important in our understanding of Paul’s identity as an apostle united with the sufferings of Christ. Slaves were often branded by marks (stigmata) burned into their flesh to show to whom they belonged; so also were devotees of pagan gods. Paul implies that instead of outdated circumcision, his body bears the scars of his apostolic labors (2 Corinthians 11:22–31), such as floggings (Acts 16:22; 2 Corinthians 11:25) and stonings (Acts 14:19), that mark him as belonging to the Christ who suffered (cf. Romans 6:3; 2 Corinthians 4:10; Colossians 1:24) and will protect his own. (USCCB)
For St Paul, it was very clear that to suffer was to participate in the redemptive mystery of Christ and for St Paul to become like Christ. In the Modern Catholic Dictionary, Servant of God Fr. John A. Hardon, S.J. explains regarding suffering: “Its purpose, however, is not only to expiate wrongdoing, but to enable the believer to offer God a sacrifice of praise of his divine right over creatures, to unite oneself with Christ in his sufferings as an expression of love, and in the process to become more like Christ, who having joy set before him, chose the Cross, and thus ‘to make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of His body, the Church,’ (1 Colossians 1:24)” According to Mother Angelica, “Paul knew that Christ’s example of every virtue was as redemptive as His death. By the example of his holy life, the Christian was to release and set his neighbor free from the bondage of sin in which he was immersed. Holiness reaches out to touch everyone and gives them the courage to follow in the footsteps of Jesus. The Christian’s suffering was acceptable to the Father for the salvation of mankind because he was so united to Jesus through the grace of the Holy Spirit and because whatever he suffered, Jesus suffered in him. “It makes me happy,” Paul told the Colossians, “to suffer for you, as I am suffering now, and in my own body to do what I can to make up all that has still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of His Body, the Church” (Col. 1:24). It is Jesus who continues to suffer in the Christian for the good of all mankind.”
There is purpose in the sufferings of a Christian, and as a Christian community, the purpose of suffering serves to bind us in the unity of the love of the Holy Trinity – that partaking of their suffering, and joining our suffering with theirs, we help to build the Mystical Body of Christ. St Paul utilised his own suffering as a redemptive prayer for his neighbours, that they having witnessed his union with the Cross, would be moved and come to repentance and conversion as well. This is exemplar in his words, “I have my own hardships to bear, even to being chained like a criminal — but they cannot chain up God’s news. So I bear it all for the sake of those who are chosen, so that in the end they may have the salvation that is in Christ Jesus and the eternal glory that comes with it” (2 Timothy 2:9-10, emphasis added). In this case, St. Paul used Redemptive Suffering offered to God for the sake of others – “My sorrow is so great, my mental anguish so endless, I would willingly be condemned and be cut off from Christ if it could help my brothers of Israel, my own flesh and blood” (Romans 9:2-4). So close was St Paul to Christ, that he had within himself a desire to suffer for others so they too might come to know Jesus and enjoy His Kingdom (see Mother Angelica).
Suffering in a community can come under many forms: a member of the community falls gravely ill; someone has insurmountable debts and bills that cannot be paid off, no matter the effort put in in eradicating those debts; someone is persecuted or harassed at work; there is disability; repeated failures; broken relationships; anxiety. As Bert Ghezzi puts it, “We are tempted to believe that just by being good Christians we can make suffering go away. We imagine that God’s promise of blessing means that he will spare us all pain. But it doesn’t work that way. Jesus made suffering a normal part of the Christian life. He promised his disciples multiple blessings, but tacked onto the end of the good things he said they could expect was a promise of suffering: “There is no one who has left house, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children or land for my sake and for the sake of the gospel who will not receive a hundred times as much, houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and land—and persecutions too—now in this present time and, in the world to come, eternal life” (Mark 10:29-30). So suffering is not an option for Christians. It’s a guarantee.”
Yet, what marks the Christian apart from other people is this. Our suffering has a purpose and our suffering is redemptive. How do we grow as a community with the burden of all these crosses and sufferings? There is a leaf to be taken from the early Christians. “Early Christians teach that suffering reminds Christians that they are not as self-sufficient as they would like to think; suffering cautions Christians not to try to stand defiantly by themselves and not to trust only in their own resources. Suffering teaches Christians to be dependent upon others and to accept help that they have not earned. Above all, for early Christians, suffering offered a path to align one’s life with the values of Jesus Christ, to carry one’s cross in the hope of sharing in his resurrection.” (Lefebure) That is how a community may grow from strength to strength in suffering – to offer their sufferings for others, to suffer together and rely on each other, and above all, to unite their own sufferings with the love and sufferings of Christ.
Imagine the graces received when an individual unites his or her suffering with the sacred wounds and the suffering of Jesus. This person’s life begins to transcend the mundane and the ordinary, for suddenly there is a deeper meaning to the suffering of the person. Now multiply the sufferings experienced in a community, and offered up to the Lord for the reparation of sin and the conversion of sinners. Imagine the multitudinous blessings! The effects of uniting one’s suffering with the Lord has effects that are pleasing to the Lord across generations. We may never even see the effects of prayer offered up in the form of suffering and walking with the Lord. Yet these ramifications are real. As Psalm 90 says, ” Lord you have been our dwelling place from one generation to the next,” (1) and “Make us glad as many days as you have afflicted us, and as many years as we have seen evil.” (15)
By the Grace of God,
Brian Bartholomew Tan
Sources:
Evinger, Amanda. “How Faith in Redemptive Suffering can Keep us Sane”. National Catholic Register.
Ghezzi, Bert. “An acceptance of Suffering”. Loyola Press.
Hardon, John A S.J. Modern Catholic Dictionary.
Lefebure, Leo. “The Understanding of Suffering in the Early Church”. Journal of Dialogue & Culture. Vol. 4, No. 2 (October 2015)
Pizzalato, Brian. “St Paul explains the meaning of suffering”. Catholic News Agency.
Mother Angelica. “What is Redemptive Suffering?” Catholic Exchange.
St. Pope John Paul II. Salvifici Doloris. 1984
USCCB. Bible commentary on Galatians 6:17