I recently bumped into someone who was suffering deeply from the sudden and unexpected suicidal death of someone he loves. His grief pushed me to do some reflecting on my own grief and suffering, and it strikes me that suffering is transformative — not by suffering apart and not by suffering alone — but by recognizing our universal connectedness with each other and with God. It strikes me that the only way out of deep sadness and grief is to go with it and through it. We need to give ourselves permission to grieve. When I grieve I feel the benefit, the blessing, to remember that Jesus suffered too, and so it makes sense to me to join my suffering to the suffering Jesus Christ, to reflect on the truth that I suffer through Him, and with Him, and in Him. I also realize that I have suffered greater pain in my life when I forgot that the only way to hold suffering spiritually — and not let it destroy me — is to recognize that I cannot do it alone. When I try to suffer alone heroically, I quickly get weighed down, I get distracted, and sometimes minimize or deny the truth of my suffering, and pretend that I just have to tough it out. Deciding that I must suffer alone makes it impossible to learn suffering’s softening lessons. But when I can find a shared meaning for something, especially if it allows me to love God and others in the same action, God can get me through it. I begin to trust the ambiguous process of life.
When I carry my small suffering in solidarity with the one universal longing of all humanity, to love and be loved, it helps keep me from self-pity or self-preoccupation. We know that we are all in this together, and it is just as hard for everybody else. Almost all people are carrying a great and secret hurt, even when they don’t know it. When we can make the shift to realize this, it softens the space around our overly defended hearts. It makes it hard to be cruel or vindictive to anyone. Shared struggle somehow makes us one — in a way that easy comfort and entertainment never can.
My individual suffering when placed spiritually at the foot of the Cross makes me realize that there really is only one suffering, the suffering of God. The image of Jesus on the cross somehow communicates that to me.
The Crucified Christ is the dramatic symbol of the one suffering that God fully enters into with us — and not just for us, as I have come to think.
If suffering, even unjust suffering (and all suffering is unjust on some level), is part of one great mystery of Jesus Christ’s suffering, then I am willing —and even ok — sometimes — with carrying my portion. But I must trust that my suffering is somehow helping someone or something, and that it matters in the great scheme of things. And that can happen only when I see my suffering in union with the suffering of Christ. The Apostle Paul speaks of this in a startling way: “24 I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, that is, the church” Colossians 1:24. The only way this makes sense to me is to understand the call to build my life on the truth of union with God. There is no other way I understand it.
Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me a sinner.
“And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you”
1 Peter 5:10.
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” Romans 8:18.
“More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” Romans 5:3-5.
“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing” James 1:2-4.
“In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world”
John 16:33.
“And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me”
Matthew 10:38.
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