Why do we suffer?

THE quick and short answer to that question is because we

are not with God, from whom all good things come. We prefer to be on

our own, even to make ourselves our own God. Of course, separated from

God, from whom, to repeat, all good things come, the only thing that

can happen to us is to suffer.

  

          Not only do we suffer, but we neither cannot help but also

die, which is a consequence of our sin, a contradiction to what being

with God, who is life eternal, would entitle us. With God, we can only

have joy, bliss and everything that is good. Without him, we can only

have the opposite.

   

          Suffering is not intended for us in the beginning, nor in

the end, in our final state of life in heaven. But we brought

suffering to ourselves by disobeying God, by daring to separate

ourselves from God. That’s why, we suffer now. We cannot avoid it

anymore.

  

          Remember that our first parents, still in the state of

original justice, did not know any suffering or pain. They were meant

to be immortal, to enjoy what is known as impassibility (the capacity

not to suffer any pain, even tiredness) and integrity, the state of

being in harmony with their own selves and with everything else.

  

          But all that was lost because they disobeyed God’s

commandment to them and preferred to do their own will. They preferred

to separate themselves from God, thinking that they can be their own

God. That was the seemingly irresistible temptation the devil, the

father of all lies, hoisted on them.

  

          But in spite of all that, God continues to love us. He is

such a father to us that even our sins and our stupidities would make

him love us some more. This he did by sending his Son to us to save

us. Let’s try to imagine what all this divine endeavor would involve.

  

          The Son had to become man to tackle the whole problem of our

sinfulness that unavoidably leads us to suffering and eventually to

death. We can just imagine the kind of “suffering” God had to undergo

to save us!

  

          In the words of St. Paul, the Son of God emptied himself to

become man, and he emptied himself further by suffering death for our

sake, and death on the cross. Let us try to go through his passion and

death to have a good idea of what Christ our redeemer had to undergo

to save us.

  

          The suffering and death of Christ which was the price, the

ransom for our redemption, is the paradigm we have to follow to heal

ourselves of our strong tendency to be by own selves alone, daring to

separate ourselves from God. Christ has converted suffering and death

into a means to our salvation.

   

          This time, our suffering as long as it is united to the

suffering of Christ, becomes the cure that heals us of our fundamental

infirmity to separate ourselves from God. Our suffering now can have a

redemptive value. It is something that we should welcome and even look

for. Without suffering, we cannot help but stay away from God.

  

          That is why not only do we suffer now, which is unavoidable,

but we also have to suffer, to look for it, because only through

suffering can we be reconciled with God, from whom we come and to whom

we belong in a most intimate way since God wants us to be his image

and likeness, to be children of his.

   

          We need to readjust our understanding of suffering to

conform it to how Christ wants our suffering to be. Every suffering we

experience in this life should be an invitation to “deny ourselves,”

to empty ourselves, so we can be with God, and in fact, be “another

Christ,” who is the pattern of our humanity, the savior of our damaged

humanity.