Suffering

[NCSue]

I’m interested in hearing how suffering influences faith and vice versa. Read the post at acts17verse28.blogspot.com/2009/06/understanding-suffering.html. At the end are questions that are “food for thought”.

How about you? How does your faith influence your thoughts on suffering? And has your own experience of suffering had an effect - positive or negative - on your faith?

 

[Zundrah]

I remember once when I had twisted the ligament in my leg ( very painful ). Every one with me was so inconsiderate for my pain. They wouldn’t help me walk and just kept telling me to hurry. I couldn’t walk for days but we were in EXMORE! - out on a country week out! There was no medical center or help. There was no one there that I really knew either.

I was laying down in agony that night and just thought to myself, "God…thank Christ that I know you. I would be so alone right now).:bible1:

 

[TheWhim]

How about you? How does your faith influence your thoughts on suffering? And has your own experience of suffering had an effect - positive or negative - on your faith?

I believe there’s been definitely an influence of my faith on the suffering I’ve had to go to so far. To be sure, one cannot have been so abominably treated by life if one is just twenty-one years old and will still have to experience the many future atrocities about life. However, I was afflicted with an illness early in my youth that hampered with my educational progress and even put me out of school for an entire year. It took some time until the proper remedies were applied and now I can safely look back onto this time and express my confidence that I’ve outgrown such conditions. The mark of affliction, however, has left its indeletable impression upon my soul.

Basically, faith is hope. It’s the belief that life, somehow, will continue to be; that things will keep going in their course; that every shower is followed by sunlight; that no darkness can be so thick as to banish even the smallest glimpse of light. My faith supplies me with that hope. Faith is a reason to hope.

There is inflicted suffering for which one cannot be rendered guilty. But sometimes one’s own culpability is involved. This is perhaps the worst pain: the pain of sin. – The moments cannot be counted when I, despite my best intentions, seem to reject all my principles and to act contrary to what I’ve placed all my trust in. Well, if I wouldn’t have faith I would despair. Without the aid of grace and the promise that the black spots will eventually be blotted out, every sin would grow into extravagant proportions and ultimately shroud our soul in utter darkness. I’ve made certain decisions in my young life and have been committed to certain actions which I deeply regret now but whose effects remain irrevocable. These decisions and actions, however, were not especially sinful. What, then, about those monstrous slanders, violent transgressions, horrid infringements upon the Divine rights and the rights of others – that make my soul shake with disgust when I’m forced by some sudden remembrance to think of them again? What could be done about such evil fruits of trespassing that forever are a burden to a man’s conscience if it would not be for the promise of faith, of hope, of salvation?

Well, every time we receive a heavy drawback in our daily life due to external circumstances or the malice of our fellow humans, and every time we threaten our own ideal of integrity by lamentable actions, two possibilities are viable for us: either we restrict our life, step back into a smaller circle, cut short our great plans, tone down our optimistic conduct; or we stretch out anew, we come to feel the still greater pangs of an inexterminable thirst for life, we excert our faculties, we dive into our projects driven by a hope that can never be conquered because it was given by the One who whispered to us in some gloomy hour: ‘In the world you are frightened; but I have overcome the world.’

Faith keeps the wheel spinning.

 

[Joe_Kelley]

My sister gave me Mother Angelica’s Little Book of Life Lessons and Everyday Spirituality for Christmas.

She has an especially good chapter on suffering. Suffering has been a constant of her life. She notes that:

When you are suffering you have the capability of achieving great things. You can:

1. Create great holiness and become a powerful witness to those around you.

1. By accepting your pain you are doing God’s Will in an awesome way.

1. By offering your pain to God, you can save souls.

Tod is trusting you with pain; He is trusting you to accept it with love. Don’t miss the possibilities.

 

[Luke_K]

I had a painful injury today at work- broke a finger, got some stitches.

My faith had really been struggling over the weekend. I prayed to God for faith on my way to work this morning. This injury was the answer to my prayers.

I, quite honestly, have not had much physical pain in my life. This might have been the worst pain in my life (pretty lame compared to what I read other people on this forum have gone through).

For a moment I thought to myself, why in the world does God allow pain? I was mad at him. I really felt faithless for a little bit.

Then I thought of Jesus being scourged, and I felt God’s love for me in a clearer way than ever before in my life, because of the pain I was feeling myself at that moment.

I really might have given up my faith today if it weren’t for that injury. I now have a new reason for believing: Just thinking of Jesus’ suffering while I was suffering made me happy, and I don’t think anything else in the world could replicate the feeling I had.

I was SO convinced of my faith at that moment! I still don’t have an answer for the questions that were moving me to disbelief, but my injury today was without a doubt God’s answer to my prayer.

 

[Drawmack]

I’m interested in hearing how suffering influences faith and vice versa. Read the post at acts17verse28.blogspot.com/2009/06/understanding-suffering.html. At the end are questions that are “food for thought”.

How about you? How does your faith influence your thoughts on suffering? And has your own experience of suffering had an effect - positive or negative - on your faith?

I will save you all the gory details and simply say that I have suffered plenty in my life. I’ve suffered more than some and less than others, but plenty nonetheless. You want to know how this affects my faith. Well, it dictates that I must believe. If there is not something better to come from this life, if there is not some deeper meaning than dying with the most toys then I have no reason to wake up tomorrow and I might as well just end it now. That is how my suffering affects my faith.

 

[centurionguard]

I’m interested in hearing how suffering influences faith and vice versa. Read the post at acts17verse28.blogspot.com/2009/06/understanding-suffering.html. At the end are questions that are “food for thought”.

How about you? How does your faith influence your thoughts on suffering? And has your own experience of suffering had an effect - positive or negative - on your faith?

When I first laid my eyes on this thread I wanted to avoid it.
But I went against my hesitancy and decided to share.
Yet; for this sharing I will stare away from the negative aspects of suffering in place of something positive. The following is something we can all draw spiritual strength from.
And I claim this spiritual lesson most for myself.

BELOVED CROSSES Sermon by Saint John Vianney Cure De Ars.

The Saints my dear brothers and sisters ALL LOVED THE CROSS and found in it their strength and their consolation. But, you will say to me, it is necessary, then always to have something to suffer? Now sickness or poverty, or again scandal or calumny, or possible loss of money or an infirmity? Have you been calumniated, my friends?
Have you been loaded with insults? Have you been wronged? So much the better !
That is a good sign; do not worry; you are on the road that leads to heaven. Do you know when you ought to be really upset? I do not know if you understand it, but it should be precisely for the opposite reason when you have nothing to endure, when everyone esteems and respects you. then you should feel envious of those who have the happiness of passing their lives in suffering, or contempt, or poverty. Are you forgetting, then, that at your Baptism you accepted the Cross, which you must never abandon until death, and that it is the key that you will use to open the door of Heaven? Are you forgetting the words of our Savior. (“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me”) Not for a day, not for a week, not for a year, but all our lives.
The Saints had great fear of passing any time without suffering, for they looked at it as time lost. According to Saint Theresa of Avila, man is only in this world to suffer, and when he ceases to suffer, he should cease to live. Saint John of the Cross asks God, with tears, to give him the grace to suffer more as a reward for all his labors.
What should we conclude my dear children, from all that? Just this: Let us make a resolution to have great respect for all crosses, which are blessed, and which represent to us in a small way all that our God Suffered for us. Let us recall that from the Cross flow all the graces that are bestowed upon us and that as a consequence, a cross which is blessed is a source of blessings, that we should often make the Sign of the Cross on ourselves and always with great respect, and, finally, that our homes should never remain without this symbol of salvation. Fill your children my brothers and sisters, with the greatest respect for the Cross, and always have a blessed cross on yourselves; it will protect you against the devil, from the vengeance of heaven, and from all danger. This is what I desire of you. Saint John Vianney.

 

[centurionguard]

BELOVED CROSSES Sermon by Saint John Vianney Cure De Ars.

The Saints my dear brothers and sisters ALL LOVED THE CROSS and found in it their strength and their consolation. But, you will say to me, it is necessary, then always to have something to suffer? Now sickness or poverty, or again scandal or calumny, or possible loss of money or an infirmity? Have you been calumniated, my friends?
Have you been loaded with insults? Have you been wronged? So much the better !
That is a good sign; do not worry; you are on the road that leads to heaven. Do you know when you ought to be really upset? I do not know if you understand it, but it should be precisely for the opposite reason when you have nothing to endure, when everyone esteems and respects you. then you should feel envious of those who have the happiness of passing their lives in suffering, or contempt, or poverty. Are you forgetting, then, that at your Baptism you accepted the Cross, which you must never abandon until death, and that it is the key that you will use to open the door of Heaven? Are you forgetting the words of our Savior. (“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me”) Not for a day, not for a week, not for a year, but all our lives.
The Saints had great fear of passing any time without suffering, for they looked at it as time lost. According to Saint Theresa of Avila, man is only in this world to suffer, and when he ceases to suffer, he should cease to live. Saint John of the Cross asks God, with tears, to give him the grace to suffer more as a reward for all his labors.
What should we conclude my dear children, from all that? Just this: Let us make a resolution to have great respect for all crosses, which are blessed, and which represent to us in a small way all that our God Suffered for us. Let us recall that from the Cross flow all the graces that are bestowed upon us and that as a consequence, a cross which is blessed is a source of blessings, that we should often make the Sign of the Cross on ourselves and always with great respect, and, finally, that our homes should never remain without this symbol of salvation. Fill your children my brothers and sisters, with the greatest respect for the Cross, and always have a blessed cross on yourselves; it will protect you against the devil, from the vengeance of heaven, and from all danger. This is what I desire of you. Saint John Vianney.

 

[centurionguard]

BELOVED CROSSES Sermon by Saint John Vianney Cure De Ars.

The Saints my dear brothers and sisters ALL LOVED THE CROSS and found in it their strength and their consolation. But, you will say to me, it is necessary, then always to have something to suffer? Now sickness or poverty, or again scandal or calumny, or possible loss of money or an infirmity? Have you been calumniated, my friends?
Have you been loaded with insults? Have you been wronged? So much the better !
That is a good sign; do not worry; you are on the road that leads to heaven. Do you know when you ought to be really upset? I do not know if you understand it, but it should be precisely for the opposite reason when you have nothing to endure, when everyone esteems and respects you. then you should feel envious of those who have the happiness of passing their lives in suffering, or contempt, or poverty. Are you forgetting, then, that at your Baptism you accepted the Cross, which you must never abandon until death, and that it is the key that you will use to open the door of Heaven? Are you forgetting the words of our Savior. (“If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me”) Not for a day, not for a week, not for a year, but all our lives.
The Saints had great fear of passing any time without suffering, for they looked at it as time lost. According to Saint Theresa of Avila, man is only in this world to suffer, and when he ceases to suffer, he should cease to live. Saint John of the Cross asks God, with tears, to give him the grace to suffer more as a reward for all his labors.
What should we conclude my dear children, from all that? Just this: Let us make a resolution to have great respect for all crosses, which are blessed, and which represent to us in a small way all that our God Suffered for us. Let us recall that from the Cross flow all the graces that are bestowed upon us and that as a consequence, a cross which is blessed is a source of blessings, that we should often make the Sign of the Cross on ourselves and always with great respect, and, finally, that our homes should never remain without this symbol of salvation. Fill your children my brothers and sisters, with the greatest respect for the Cross, and always have a blessed cross on yourselves; it will protect you against the devil, from the vengeance of heaven, and from all danger. This is what I desire of you. Saint John Vianney.