What’s the church’s teaching on suffering? Is it something noble, something to “offer up”? Is there merit in it? For my Jewish friends, on a day of fasting such as Yom Kippur, it is the fasting that is important. You don’t get “extra credit” if the fasting was difficult. In contrast, I was always taught that when giving up something for Lent, it had to be a “real sacrifice”… something difficult. You had to suffer a little for it to “count”. Some see suffering as a test of faith, sent by God to “try us”. I can’t believe in a God who inflicts suffering. Suffering is held up as something noble by Paul and other New Testament writes, but they were writing to a church under persecution. They were writing to a people who were suffering. Of course they would say that suffering is a good and noble thing, a meritorious thing. Please tell me what the church teaches today?
Yours truly, Trying to Make Sense of Suffering.

Dear Trying to Make Sense of Suffering,

I am not sure if there is a ‘church teaching’ on suffering. Since suffering is part and parcel of human existence, there is always an ongoing reflection on the meaning of suffering and the response that is called forth from Christians. Let me try to give a few directions as an answer.

First, suffering is, in itself, an evil. Hence, to try and put a positive spin on suffering is to deny its reality if we do not first recognize that God does not want us to suffer.

Having said that, the reality of human existence with our mortal and fragile human bodies is that we do and will suffer, sometimes physically, other times emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, in our relationships of love and caring. Suffering is part of the human condition.

The Church does not teach and has never taught that one is to seek out suffering. Even when the Church finds some value in suffering—as it obviously does in the crucifixion and death of Jesus—there is no place for gratuitous suffering or for turning suffering into something good that we are to seek. But since we do and will suffer, there are great spiritual traditions within Catholicism concerning both the meaning of and how to deal with suffering.

To begin with, we can unite our sufferings with the sufferings of Christ. This is meant to be a spiritual exercise in which we come to understand more deeply what Jesus, the innocent one, went through to save us from our own sins. It is also an exercise of learning to ‘carry My yoke’ and ‘shoulder ‘My burden’ because he helps us to carry them.

There are many saints who have longed to share, in one manner or another, in the sufferings which they understand as part of Christ’s redemptive suffering. One needs to understand that they are not doing things in order to suffer but are willing to undergo suffering as a way of being closer to the Suffering Christ.

Most religions have to deal with the reality of suffering. Traditional responses (from many of them) are that suffering does some or many of the following: 1.) It helps us to grow, sometimes to change, to mature, to be more realistic, more compassionate; 2.) Suffering can be purgative—in the sense that some people feel they must ‘pay’ for something they have done and suffering is seen by them as re-establishing the ‘balance’; 3.) Suffering is often, as mentioned above, a way of connecting with (NOT placating, which is an ancient heresy) a God who became human and shares our condition, including suffering, in order to offer us something more (eternal life); 4.) Suffering can be an honest consequence of our sin, foolishness, mistakes, evils. Many times people suffer because they have made very bad choices and suffering is sometimes seen as a punishment (as is often the case when people are put in jail).

Now all of these ‘answers’ are true in some ways and in some situations. The problem we run into as human beings is to make these answers THE answer, i.e., to say that they explain or provide meaning for suffering. These are traditional responses, ways of coming to terms with the reality of suffering. In fact, suffering is a great mystery, as much a part of the mystery of life as is the gift of life that we have all received and I always caution individuals (especially Christians) against absolutizing any of these meanings of suffering or, indeed, absolutizing their own personal way of coming to terms with suffering. For example, a person who believes that suffering is simply God’s punishment for him/herself, will project that into other people’s lives and cause untold damage. Similarly, while suffering may be a profound learning experience, it is foolish to tell the parents of a dying child that this is a great learning experience.

Hence, there are three things that I think the Christian needs to be aware of in both understanding and coming to terms with suffering.

First, God is in our midst as one who has embraced human suffering, even to the point of death on the Cross, and who has thereby promised us both that “I am with you always” regardless of what we go through and that there is a bigger answer beyond suffering for those who trust God.

Second, we do find our individual ways of dealing with suffering—everything from a spiritual union with Christ to outright denial—and these do provide us with much wisdom. Think of how often young people have to learn things the hard way—ie, by personal experience, rather than listening to their parents and elders—but many of these people do learn. And often they will say things like, “Yes, it was awful, but I don’t think I would have learned any other way.” In other words, suffering just is; but what we make of it is critical.

Thirdly, one of the things we most overlook in our individualistic society is how a community, like the Christian community (or any religious community), to tragedy or suffering. We gather, we try to support, we strive to bring compassion and comfort, we are present both as individuals and, often, as Church in the sacraments and compassion of spiritual care. We recognize the ubiquity of suffering and pain and we try to offer the hope of human presence/companionship/support, often within the all-embracing arms of a God who loves us.

Too many people today would like to do away with suffering and end up doing away with God. That might be intellectually satisfying to them; but when one takes time to listen to God in prayer, in the Scriptures, in the sacraments, and in God’s community, the compassion and presence of God is undenial—not in taking away suffering, though our awareness of God’s presence often makes it more endurable—but in the realization that suffering plays a part in the midst of this beautiful gift of life that is ours. In some ways we find the greatness of God’s love in suffering, not because we mistakenly think God wants us to suffer but because in our weakness and helplessness we find a God who truly is Love.

Suffering is a reality of human life. So is God. Putting the two together is often the task of one’s spiritual life. It is not the whole of one’s spiritual life; but there are not many saints who were not tested in the crucible of suffering. There they found, at the deepest level, the God they believed in.

God’s presence—and the community’s fidelity to this God—is the only full answer to suffering.

aka Fr. Bill C.Ss.R.