Suffering Is a Pain

Suffering Is a Pain. This is a topic that is always with us in this life! As Catholics we often hear about the redemptive power of suffering. How are we to do that in a way that is powerful and in a way where we collaborate with the grace the Lord is giving? We know the saints suffered well and that is even before they were saints. We can tend to forget they weren’t yet canonized when they were still alive. What is the difference between suffering and just being in pain?

Suffering is the way we respond to pain. We often get taught not to grumble, complain, become impatient, take it out on your neighbor, or self-medicate. Yet, nature abhors a vacuum and it’s insufficient to hear what not to do. We need to know what to do.

First, we need to acknowledge the suffering or frustration and not stuff it and then leave the emotions to come out sideways. In Jesus’ agony in the garden before His crucifixion, He didn’t deny or minimize what He was about to undergo, even though He knew how things were going to end and that He would rise in three days! He still sweat blood. He was real with the situation and was in touch with His emotions. Emotions are energy that move us from or towards something and if we just stuff them, they can come out in a variety of unhealthy ways.

Secondly, we can consider how the Lord experienced the same type of suffering or greater. He suffered in many ways in His earthly life, even before His Passion. He put up with frustration in dealing with the apostles as they bickered about who was the greatest, He was a sign of contradiction, rejected even for doing good, denied, betrayed, tortured, mocked, ridiculed, and put to death.

Next, we can unite our sufferings to His. That is so powerful. The notion of atonement – being at one with Him can afford us an insight into the Lord’s own pain and what He endured for love of us. Also, because He suffered in these ways, He is well acquainted with what we suffer. I can be present to He who is present to me.

Then, we experience the intimacy of being seen into by Him as we see into what He suffered. When the pain goes away what is left is love. Suffering hurts, is painful, is difficult. Don’t beat yourself up for that or put pressure on yourself that suffering shouldn’t be difficult. If it wasn’t so, it wouldn’t be suffering. Yet, the Lord can transform every occasion of suffering into an occasion of intimacy with Him. His compassionate love sustains us in the midst of the difficulty.

Finally, we do whatever good we are supposed to be doing out of the power of intimacy with the Lord. Suffering does NOT have to lead us to isolation, but through drawing closer to the Lord in the midst of it there is intimacy with the Lord. We are moved out of the isolation of pain into the intimacy of suffering with the Lord and then empowered by the union with Him and His Holy Spirit to imitate Him. We are not made for isolation, but for connection.

Somehow through it all we are transformed from death to new life in Him! He equips our crosses with that same transforming power of His Cross.

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Suffering Is a Pain