Nobody likes to suffer, yet in his letter to the Colossians, St Paul writes, “Now I REJOICE in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the Church.” First, why does St. Paul rejoice in his sufferings and secondly, how can he fill up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. The Servant of God, Pope John Paul the Great wrote an Apostolic Letter on this topic in 1984 called Salvifici Doloris, or Salvific Suffering. He begins by talking about “the joy that comes from the discovery of the meaning of suffering.” The first thing to remember is the difference between pain and suffering. Pain is a physical sensation that something is wrong with the body. Pain need not be tolerated and medicine or approved medical techniques should be used to alleviate pain. Suffering comes from our own inner desire to have something that we do not possess. One question I’ve often gotten from older people who are sick is “Why does God keep me around?” Some people in trying to understand suffering reach the point of actually denying God, thinking that this pain comes from God or if God were real then He could get rid of this suffering. But this is precisely the nature of evil. Something is evil because it does not fit into God’s rational and ordered plan for the universe. If we could fit suffering into a rational plan then it would not be so evil. “Salvation,” the Pope writes, “means liberation from evil, and for this reason it is closely bound up with the problem of suffering. . .and the definitive suffering: the loss of eternal life.” Christ shared in the depth of that suffering. For while Jesus knew no sin, He became sin for us and took upon His shoulders all our sins. For as Pope John Paul has written, “In the Cross of Christ not only is the Redemption accomplished through suffering, but also human suffering ITSELF has been redeemed. . . Man, discovering through faith, the redemptive suffering of Christ, also discovers in it, his own sufferings.” Suffering, then when united to Christ’s suffering on the cross, can have meaning because it has become redemptive, if we but unite it to Christ. As St. Paul writes in the Second Letter to the Corinthians, “For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.” As long as we unite our suffering to Christ on the Cross, just as Jesus was raised up on the third day, so to our own suffering, when done in union with Christ, will lead to eternal life and Resurrection on the last day. If we hold on to our suffering, and refuse to offer it up, it simply weighs us down and drags us further away from God. But how can we “fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church.” “Does that mean that the Redemption achieved by Christ is not complete?” Pope John Paul responds, " No. It only means that the Redemption, . . . remains always open to all love expressed in human suffering. . . Christ achieved the Redemption completely and to the very limits but at the same time He did not bring it to a close. . . For, at the same time, this Redemption, even though it was completely achieved by Christ’s suffering, lives on and in its own special way develops in the history of man. It lives and develops as the body of Christ, the Church, and in this dimension every human suffering, by reason of the loving union with Christ, completes the suffering of Christ." In other words, the Church, which is the Mystical Body of Christ, in order to be conformed to Christ and made in His image and likeness, must suffer. The Church exists in time and space and so, not only our own sufferings, but the sufferings of generations who are yet to come, are part of that Mystical Body of Christ. Therefore, because the Church exists in time, each generation must appropriate to itself the sufferings of Christ. The suffering of Christ on the Cross, two thousand years ago, was more than sufficient for our salvation. While Christ’s suffering were abundantly sufficient to save each and every person ever created, Christ’s sacrifice is not complete until we have accepted that suffering into our own lives and it comes to fruition in the Resurrection to eternal life. The Servant of God, Pope John Paul II, not only explained to us the redemptive power of suffering by his words but he showed it to us in the way he lived his life. When he was afflicted with Parkinson’s disease in his later years, Pope John Paul did not allow his physical ailments to deter him from his mission. Pope John Paul showed us not only with his words but also with his life how to “fill up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the Church.”
I’m only half joking there.
) But should I try to cure it? Or should I, instead, walk as much as possible so as to offer up my suffering, until my bones fuse together from the abuse, or whatever?
