All of us are fully aware of the suffering in our lives—suffering, as a consequence of Adam and Eve’s fall, affects everyone, to various degrees and in different ways. While we know this to be true, we often find it hard t to explain why certain kinds of tragedies happen at all. Why do young people lose their lives? Why do babies die in their mothers’ wombs? Why do our friends and family have to leave this life when we least expect it? These questions will always remain a mystery, until we experience the Beatific Vision in Heaven and can see God’s magnificent plan for the world. For now, these questions remain constant for us, and resurface every time another tragedy occurs. Nevertheless, when we experience a tragedy or know someone else who does, this is not a cause for despair. Rather, these tragedies are filled with hope for the love promised to us by God, in which we are privileged to participate in here on earth but also, more importantly, in Heaven.
Even though sin and death entered the world with the fall of Adam and Eve, we can see God’s great plan of love even from the beginning, for Adam and Eve were created in the image and likeness of God (see Genesis 1:26-27). In what is called the Protoevangelium, a Savior is promised, who will crush the head of the serpent, the devil (see Genesis 3:15). The story of the Old Testament, with the stories of the great patriarchs and prophets, is preparation for the coming of the Savior. Throughout all of Israel’s inconstancies, sin, and idolatry, God remains with them (see 2 Samuel 7:9). Even when Israel breaks its covenants with God and is punished by him, God is still there, and he is still willing to remain in covenant with them. God is preparing the Israelites for the fullness of time, when he would send his own Son into the world, that they might be redeemed from their sins.
Thus, we can see the suffering of God’s people from the very beginning, all throughout the story of the Israelites. Yet God was always there: He did not abandon them entirely, even though He did allow them to suffer when they turned away from Him. Their faithfulness and trust were rewarded when they remained faithful to His covenant. In the fullness of time, God sent his Son into the world, so that the people would know eternal life: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). For us, living 2000 years after the time of Christ, we know the prophecies of suffering that point forward to Christ (see Isaiah 53). Christ would take on the transgressions of the people—he would take on all their sins and suffer brutal punishment for the sake of the people, whom God loved so dearly. Christ would suffer the most horrendous death for love. He could have very easily pricked His finger and shed one drop of blood to save man from His sin, but instead, He chose to give everything out of love. He chose to pour out all His blood on the Cross, because He loved us and desired us to be in Heaven with Him.
This is a reality that we are quite familiar with, but often do not think about, or choose to forget when we are suffering. Instead, we might choose to focus on God’s silence, rather than His infinite loved, revealed throughout salvation history. We might ask the following questions: Why would God allow such a tragedy to happen? Do we not suffer enough? Where was God when this thing happened? Why does he not hear my prayers? In his post-apostolic exhortation, Pope Benedict XVI acknowledges the fact of the silence of God at the crucifixion: “As the cross of Christ demonstrates, God also speaks by his silence. The silence of God, the experience of the almighty Father, is a decisive stage in the earthly journey of the Son of God, the incarnate Word” (art. 21). Benedict XVI is here thinking of Christ’s cry to the Father, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46). Here, moments before Christ would yield his spirit, we imagine that God is entirely absent and completely silent—God himself does not even listen to the cries of his own Son. But we cannot imagine this to be the case: God is even here, in the silence of the cross. And how do we know that? At the Last Supper, Christ prayed to His Father, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him power over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:1-3). Christ’s cross was a glorification of His Father, for through His suffering, He would bring salvation to the whole world. If the cross was to glorify the Father, that means he was present with Christ on the cross, which means that God is with each one of us in our own crosses. Although we may feel we are faced with the absolute silence of God, we must trust that he is there with us, even in our deepest sufferings. For indeed, Christ descended into hell for our sake, that He might redeem us from our sins. If He is willing to go down into the depths of the earth, then He is most certainly with us in all our sufferings.
In his encyclical Spe Salvi, Benedict XVI writes of suffering as a school of hope. Christ descended into hell to save man from his sins, but we still experience suffering and death. This mystery may also be an obstacle for us. In Benedict’s words, “Yet the star of hope has risen—the anchor of the heart reaches the very throne of God. Instead of evil being unleased within man, the light shines victorious: suffering—without ceasing to be suffering—becomes, despite everything, a hymn of praise” (art. 37). Christ is our “star of hope,” for he conquered death with his death. Even if we experience temporal sufferings, Christ has opened the way to eternal life, which is the ultimate reason for this life. Despite all our temporal sufferings, despite the losses we experience, we are called to eternal life with God. As Benedict XVI reminds us in his opening paragraph, “The present, even if it is arduous, can be lived and accepted if it leads towards a goal, if we can be sure of this goal, and if this goal is great enough to justify the effort of the journey” (art. 1). And what is that goal? That goal is Jesus Christ, who is the “same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8). All of our sufferings can be oriented toward Christ; all of our groaning (see Romans 8:22) can be offered up in union with his own cries on the cross. Christ’s own suffering and death gives meaning to ours: we do not suffer in vain, but we suffer with the one who loves us infinitely, who shed his blood that we might life. Even when it seems humanly impossible, let us rejoice in our sufferings, and offer them in union with Christ’s sufferings, for such rejoicing is a sign of our hope.
In the last analysis, we turn to St. Augustine, who writes in a series of homilies on the first epistle of St. John, “The Lord for us shed His blood, redeemed us, changed our hope. As yet we bear the mortality of the flesh, and take the future immortality upon trust: and on the sea we are tossed by the waves, but we have the anchor of hope already fixed upon the land” (Homily II, 1 John 2:12-17, art. 10, emphasis added).
Veronica Arntz graduated from Wyoming Catholic College with a Bachelor of Arts in Liberal Arts, which included courses in humanities, philosophy, theology, and Latin, among others using the Great Books of Western thought. The title of her senior thesis was, “Communio Personarum Meets Communionis Sacramentum: The Cosmological Connection of Family and Liturgy.” She is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Theology from the Augustine Institute.
