Suffering

SUFFERING. - A philosophical-moral problem, psychologically arduous, is posed by the fact that suffering accompanies everyone's life. Christian Revelation has given to the "problem of pain" the only answer that calms the spirit and sublimates it even in the bitterest suffering. God does not delight in the death and sorrows of men (Wis. 1:13); rather, in a plan of providence that was frustrated by sin, He had established that man should pass from earthly life to heavenly life without passing through dissolution: but because of sin death entered the world, with all its sorrowful consequences (Rom. 5:17). The sorrows that strike humanity are physical (bodily afflictions, from want, poverty, hunger and thirst, to the most atrocious diseases up to death) and moral (temptations, aridity, anxiety, misunderstandings, adversities, up to hatred and persecutions). Every kind of manner and degree. And beyond individual sorrows, there are collective and social ones, such as wars, famines and other public calamities.

Suffering is a natural consequence of human limitation, subject to the disintegrating action of the environment and to the attacks of others' freedoms, nor does it have in itself a supernatural value. However, for man it is a call, a stimulus, a moral tonic, as the moralists of classical antiquity already demonstrated, especially the Stoics (cf. Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, II. I-III). For souls vivified by sanctifying Grace, every suffering acquires a value both meritorious and impetratory, which draws down divine favors upon them, and satisfactory and propitiatory, by which they expiate faults and ward off from themselves and their loved ones many deserved punishments. In the moral life suffering is a preservative against many sins, favoring detachment from creatures, and a light that makes one see better the various values of life. Generally speaking, other things being equal, pain borne with love and resignation increases the merit of actions and unites one more intimately to God, making the sufferer more like the Divine Savior, who willed through pain and the cross to redeem the human race from sin.

Catholic tradition has always recognized these values of suffering. Already St. Augustine observed "from every side God calls men with the scourge of tribulation" (Enarr. in Ps., 102, 8) and noted that pain has a different value according to the manner in which it is borne: "Non qualia, sed qualis quisque patiatur" (De Civit. Dei, I, 8). St. Francis de Sales affirmed that "Our Lord often does us a greater good through toils and afflictions than through happiness and consolations" (Letter 814). Indeed through the trial of suffering virtue is affirmed and refined (1 Pt. 1:7), which acquires firmness like the clay vessel in the fire (St. Augustine, in Ps., 75, v. 16). Therefore already St. Paul congratulated the Philippians that God had granted them the grace "not only to believe in Christ, but to suffer for him" (Phil. 1:29).

In ascetics the generous acceptance of suffering is of great value. "Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Mt. 5:5). Suffering enters into God's salvific designs, not only as an element of expiation, but to manifest the works of God (Jn. 9:3) and that all evils are directed to a good. Such was the illness of Lazarus, ordained by Providence so that "the Son of God might be glorified" (Jn. 11:4). The faithful must therefore accept suffering with a spirit of faith: without rebelling, but with resignation. Besides this fundamental duty, there are degrees of greater perfection, when one accepts suffering with explicit conformity to the divine will, in imitation of the Savior, who asserted that "he who does not carry his cross cannot be his disciple" (Lk. 14:27). The highest is when one not only accepts suffering with full dedication, but embraces it with joy for love of the Lord.

All the saints therefore loved suffering and exalted it. Ignatius of Loyola called "illness a gift no less than health" (Constit. of the S.J., part 3, ch. 1, n. 17), and St. Jane Frances de Chantal sincerely affirmed: "For my part I would count it a great grace that not even a single day of my life should be without sorrow; indeed not even an hour, in order to do penance for the many sins that I go on committing every day" (Letter 310). In the De imitatione Christi the Christian doctrine on suffering is summarized in the chapter De regia via sanctae crucis (II, 12).

Arnaldo M. Lanz