Suffering. This is quite literally “ground zero;” it is the first question because it is everyone’s question. Often those who don’t believe in God don’t even want to try because they can’t imagine a good God and a suffering world fitting into the same framework of reality. And often those who, for various reasons, do believe in a good God are shaken nevertheless by the darkness in the world.
Whatever are we, as Christians, to say? How are we to meet people on this most intimate level of their being?
“Man can put this question to God with all the emotion of his heart and with his mind full of dismay and anxiety; and God expects the question and listens to it…” (John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris 10)
Friar Volantino offers a striking example to help us begin to think about why suffering came (and, often, still comes) into the world in the first place.
If I am driving along and suddenly decide that I want to drive on the wrong side of the street, what would happen? -kaBOOM! I risk crashing into other cars, creating a huge wreck, not only injuring myself but injuring others who had nothing to do with my bad decision – causing a ripple effect of suffering and maybe even death.
If so much (innocent!) suffering is the natural result of breaking a merely human law…how much more must result from breaking the law of God??
There is a way that leads to life and a way that leads to death (cf. Deut 30:19-20); if human beings, of their own free will, choose to break the laws of God, suffering will inevitably result.
This short video offers a few more key thoughts from the pfsgm "catechesis" on suffering:
Please feel free to leave thoughts, questions, comments, etc. in the comments section below!
“[Every person] is called to share in that suffering through which all human suffering has also been redeemed. In bringing about the Redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the Redemption. Thus each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ.” (Ibid., n. 19)