…Why are people still being chosen to suffer in this manner, if forgiveness of our sins was confirmed on the day of Christ’s own death?
This is a really good question .
For our suffering to have any value at all, it needs to be offered to God (I can’t readily admit to being able to always offer all my sufferings to God yet personally:blush: ).
Suffering itself is a very personal thing, hence not such an easy subject to deal with; and much of suffering remains a mystery. I have an audio transcript of one of Bishop Fulton Sheen’s talks. On the tape, he laments the fact that when he was visiting a seminary, he had asked the seminarians if they thought that a priest should also be a victim … and almost all of them answered in the negative.
But that is exactly what Christ was – Priest and Victim.
Most of us (myself included) tend to shy away from the idea of additional suffering.
I found the following quote from Bishop Sheen
here
“God breathes on man in his joys; he whispers in conscience; He speaks in his troubles, and he shouts in his pain. Suffering is too great a mystery to fully comprehend its meaning; its understanding demands a loftiness of soul and surrender of spirit which few are prepared to make.”
~ Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Way to Inner Peace, Crest Books, Fawcett World Library, March, 1959, p.45
That site also supplies a link to this provocative post entitled
What The Saints Have to Say About – Suffering
After Jesus Himself, it is our Blessed Mother who suffered the most; in particular at the foot of the Cross. The very holy thing about our Blessed Mother’s suffering is that it was flawlessly united to Christ’s suffering. Sin is what separates us from God and Mary had no sin, so her suffering was intimately and perfectly united to the suffering of Christ – her offering became enfolded in her Son’s offering on Calvary.
One element of a victim soul is it shares a particular intimacy with God . At the same time, we should try to grasp the fact that our Blessed Lord is not limited in what He wishes to share with us.
Consider the prayer the priest says during the preparation of the gifts during Mass. When he mixes a small amount of water with the wine he says: “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”
Christ doesn’t just want to forgive us and redeem us – He even wants to give us a share of His divinity. That in itself is mind boggling. Here are the two verses from Romans 8 [16-17] which lead up to Romans 8:18 (linked by Della in post # 2) :
"The Spirit itself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. "
When our sufferings are united to Christ’s sufferings, they take on a redemptive value which can benefit our brothers and sisters in the Mystical Body of Christ.
What happened to Christ beginning with the Agony in the Garden through to His Crucifixion and death is called
His Passion… sometimes referred to as the** exterior sacrifice** . It identifies with
Christ the Victim.
What Christ did with His Passion – offering it to God for our salvation, is called
His Action … sometimes referred to as the
interior sacrifice. It identifies with
Christ the Priest.
… That would seem to be congruent with Bishop Sheen’s thinking that priests were also victims … wouldn’t it ?
Additionally noteworthy is what happens when a Catholic receives the Sacrament of the Sick / Anointing of the Sick : There are four main effects of the sacrament. One of those effects is that the sick person’s sufferings are united to Christ’s own Passion.
**CCC 1521 **:
Union with the passion of Christ.
By the grace of this sacrament the sick person receives the strength and the gift of uniting himself more closely to Christ’s Passion: in a certain way he is consecrated to bear fruit by configuration to the Savior’s redemptive Passion. Suffering, a consequence of original sin, acquires a new meaning; it becomes a participation in the saving work of Jesus.
