“For Jesus Christ, I am prepared to suffer still more.”
– Saint Maximilian Kolbe
Recently I have heard a lot of talk about pain and suffering. Over spring break, my friend, Garrett, and I were talking and Garrett brought up the question of suffering. Why does it happen to good people? We both agreed that there isn't really one super awesome answer that everyone will agree on, but he also wrote on this subject so go read his if you want (Garrett's Blog).
When it comes to the why of suffering, my first thought is always because of free will. Love requires a choice to either act in a loving way or to not. Those actions have consequences and you have to live with them. If you choose to have sex outside of marriage you have to deal with the possibility of pregnancy. If you choose to do drugs, you have to deal with the negative health effects. Your actions have consequences good or bad. God, out of love, has given us free will in a natural world. We can choose to love and follow Him or we can choose not to follow Him, but ultimately you are free to make the choice. But it’s also a choice of consequences. It wouldn’t be much of a choice if nothing happened when we did it.
Okay so that makes sense, but what about the people who don't do those bad things and still get cancer, or all the other suffering around the world? To that, I would still say it is because of free will. Like I said, we live in a natural world where things happen naturally. So, maybe it is was the choice of your mom or your mom's mom that brought this illness into the family. Or maybe it was just a natural thing to happen. We live in a fallen world, with sin all around us. Pain and suffering aren't something God wants or gives us. He allows us to choose and allows the consequences to happen, sometimes they don't even affect us. I am trying to say that pain, suffering, and death are because of evil entering into the world, because of sin, original sin. There was no death before that. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says, “The harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now destroyed: the control of the soul's spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination. Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man. Because of man, creation is now subject ‘to its bondage to decay.’ Finally, the consequence explicitly foretold for this disobedience will come true: man will ‘return to the ground,’ for out of it he was taken. Death makes its entrance into human history.” This is all because of Adam and Eve first sin, their choice not to obey God’s only command. The CCC also says: “Church has always taught that the overwhelming misery which oppresses men and their inclination towards evil and death cannot be understood apart from their connection with Adam's sin and the fact that he has transmitted to us a sin with which we are all born afflicted, a sin which is the ‘death of the soul.’”
We cannot understand suffering without relating it to Adam’s first sin. Now, you might be thinking, how could God allow that to be the consequence? And I would say how could God not allow that to be the consequence? Man was made out of love. God made us because He loves us, He loves you (Go read my article about love Never Stop from 2015). Mankind was made to be in perfect union with God. Man, because of his disobedience to God, could no longer be in a perfect union with God. God is perfect and so for us to be united with Him we too must be made perfect. For us to be in union with God, we must love Him out of our own free will.
Now, this all seems a little depressing – people get sick and die for no fault of their own. Don’t lose hope! Greatness can come from suffering. When we look to the Saints, we know most of the Saints had some pretty hard lives. St. Pope John Paul II lost almost all his family before he was an adult. Later in JPII’s life, he had this undying love for people who were suffering. He would beg people who were dying from cancer or other illnesses to pray for him. JPII understood the beauty in suffering. When we look at the Cross, and the suffering Christ endured for us, for me and you, suffering takes on a new light. The only price for man’s sin was death and eternal punishment. Man could not pay that debt so God became a man, suffered, and then died. He died to pay the debt we could not pay and he did not owe. When we suffer, in any way, we unite ourselves to Christ on the Cross. Start using your suffering to become great. Use your suffering to perfect yourself for Heaven. Offer it up and unite yourself to Jesus, by asking him to help to do that. So maybe this is a good answer for you! If not, go read my friend Bryce's Blog it goes into more details.
“The road is narrow. He who wishes to travel it more easily must cast off all things and use the cross as his cane. In other words, he must be truly resolved to suffer willingly for the love of God in all things.”
– Saint John of the Cross
Just my thoughts.
Go with God.
