The use of suffering

So the important thing is not why we should suffer but what we should do with our sufferings.  We have seen what Jesus did with his: he gave them to God for our sake.

The dying thieves

Now let us see how the two thieves used their sufferings.  One of them, a bad man, gritted his teeth and cursed Jesus to the end.  He was made worse by his sufferings.  But the other was made better by his.  He had also been a bad man, but he repented and accepted his sufferings as a punishment for his sins.  “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?  And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong” (NRSV, Luke 23:39-43).  Then he turned to Jesus in penitence and trust, and Jesus gave him forgiveness and eternal life.

Our Lady

And what of Our Lady?  She was innocent, completely spotless, but she suffered more than we can possibly imagine.  Years before, when she held Jesus in her arms and offered him in the Temple to God, the old man Simeon had said how a sword would pierce her soul, and the word he used for a sword referred to the terrible, broad-bladed sword of the barbarians.  It was at the Cross that her soul was pierced as she saw her only Son slowly dying in agony before her eyes.  We shall never know what she went through on that Good Friday.  But we can be sure she did not waste her sufferings by just putting up with them.  She would have used them by offering them with her Son’s and so turned them into a prayer for the salvation of the world.

Christian use of suffering

And that is the Christian use of suffering.  That is what you and I must do with our sorrows and our pains when they come.  We must offer them to God along with the sufferings of Jesus as a prayer – perhaps for someone who hates us, or who has no time or use for God, or for someone else who is suffering.  But the important thing is that we should give our suffering to God. 

We cannot fully tell why human suffering should be, but one thing we do know.  No one can point a finger at God and say, “It’s all right for you.  You don’t know what it’s like”.  Because if people do that, they find that they are pointing at the Figure on the Cross.