The fact that suffering exists is an obstacle to faith for many people.
As a loving Father, God does not make us suffer but He allows it for our good.
Jesus freely accepted his own suffering and by his Cross He conquered sin and death. This serves as an example for all men.
Our own pain and suffering can become a participation in Jesus’ Passion if we accept it and offer it to Him.
In this way our suffering becomes redemptive and a source of grace for ourselves and for the Church.
Simply complaining is not Christian suffering because it does not contribute to this treasure that could be stored in Heaven.
All pain passes through God’s hands first:
God knows suffering:
Our faith is tested in suffering:
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.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 1505
Jesus entered into the depth of our experience:
The central image of Christianity is one of suffering:
Jesus transformed suffering:
For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort.
2 Corinthians 1: 5-7
Suffering is an opportunity to show trust in God:
Salvation depends on suffering:
Those who share in Christ’s sufferings have before their eyes the Paschal Mystery of the Cross and Resurrection, in which Christ descends, in a first phase, to the ultimate limits of human weakness and impotence: indeed, He dies nailed to the Cross. But if at the same time in this weakness there is accomplished his lifting up, confirmed by the power of the Resurrection, then this means that the weaknesses of all human sufferings are capable of being infused with the same power of God manifested in Christ’s Cross. In such a concept, to suffer means to become particularly susceptible, particularly open to the working of the salvific powers of God, offered to humanity in Christ.
Pope John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris, February 11, 1984
Our lives are part of God’s mysterious plan:
The Truth, Goodness, and Beauty of the Catholic Church
Working together to do God’s will:
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