Tag Archives: Suffering

Why Suffer?

God's Will, Redemption, Suffering, , , ,

As discussed in the last post, suffering is a tragic part of the human experience. It is a reality that we all must face. It is uniquely human. All animals can feel pain, but only we can suffer. As John Paul II points out in Salvifici Doloris,

“Nevertheless what we express by the word “suffering” seems to be particularly essential to the nature of man. It is as deep as man himself, precisely because it manifests in its own way that depth which is proper to man, and in its own way surpasses it. Suffering seems to belong to man’s transcendence: it is one of those points in which man is in a certain sense “destined” to go beyond himself, and he is called to this in a mysterious way.”

Suffering is not merely the experience of pain. It is an awareness of a deficiency. The man who suffers does not suffer merely because of the pain, but because that pain is a reminder of what is lacking in himself and in the world. Suffering arises from the experience we all have of looking at ourselves and the world, and thinking “it should not be this way”.

So, what are we to do with the fact of suffering? Many have tried to run from it in the pleasures and comforts of the world only to find that these things are vanities. Ultimately, we are left with two options to deal with suffering. There is the Way of Mephistopheles, or the Way of the Cross. A middle ground does not exist. Everyone suffers, there is no choice in the matter. However, each person can choose how they will respond to it.

Suffering and Resentment

The Way of Mephistopheles, is named after the demon in Faust, and his line: “for all that comes to be / deserves to perish wretchedly”. This response is characterized by its bitter resentment. This resentment fills a person with rage, and is a quick path to misery. And, as they say, misery loves company. Those who suffer may become envious of those they perceive as suffering less. This envy, prodded by their resentment and misery, forms the basis of the justification to inflict suffering on others. Not so that they may suffer less, but so that all will suffer as they do and “perish wretchedly”. While this is certainly a grim outlook, we would be foolish to deny that our own hearts do not have the capacity for this kind of resentment. We have all seen it in small forms, like losing our cool with a family member because we are having a bad day, or maybe even in larger forms like celebrating murder. This approach to suffering ruins lives and relationships. Despite what our culture says about the compassion behind abortion and euthanasia, it is this view of suffering that drives these things. Abortion pits a mother against her child, and justifies the evil done to the child in light of the suffering or potential suffering of the mother. And with respect to euthanasia, in Canada for example, it did not take long before assisted suicide was offered to those who are suffering and did not ask for it. The contempt for suffering can drive us towards moral abominations. Indeed, in the final analysis, there may be no real difference between resentment towards suffering and resentment towards those who are suffering.

The Death of Suffering

Now that we have seen the bitterness of the Way of Mephistopheles, let’s take a look at the Way of the Cross. The path is characterized by the acceptance of suffering. Rather paradoxically, this is the only path out of suffering. Any athlete or musician knows this. In order to be excellent at something, one must suffer through long and grueling hours of practice. However, once a sort of excellence is achieved, the suffering decreases even if the practice is just as long and grueling. The symbol of the cross itself shows us the truth of this paradox. The cross has gone from a symbol of suffering so severe that it struck fear into the heart of every Roman to a symbol of hope for untold numbers of people throughout history, and all because of Jesus’ willingness to accept suffering. In the end, the problem of suffering cannot be solved without Jesus. Yes, as is laid out in this article, there is good reason to take the Way of the Cross without an explicit appeal to religion, but suffering itself cannot die unless we are willing to unite ourselves with Christ and accept the will of God the way He did in Gethsemane. As St. Paul explains in Philippians 3, by sharing in the sufferings of Christ, we can also share in his resurrection. When we learn to fully accept God’s will, suffering becomes a gift. There is no longer a reason to say, “it should not be this way”. Suffering takes on a whole new character. It becomes redemptive. Perhaps the truth of suffering is that it is destined to become either the means of our salvation or of our eternal ruin.

Suffering and Reparation

Church, Divine Mercy, Redemption, Suffering, , , ,

In his 1928 Encyclical, Miserentissimus Redemptor, Pope Pius XI exhorted Catholics to consider their obligation to offer reparation to the Sacred Heart of Jesus for the many sins of mankind and to practice it fastidiously.  By in large his call was ignored then and has long since been forgotten.  With the Protestantization that has occurred within the Church in the last half century the notion that a Christian is obligated to offer reparation seems quite foreign, even bordering on blasphemous.  Our Proto-Catholic reasons that if Christ’s once for all sacrifice has been accepted, then there is no reason why a Christian would need to perform acts of reparation.  Nevertheless, the obligation remains so that now is the time to make this a regular practice for all Christians.

Any discussion of reparation will necessarily need to begin by conquering the already-mentioned objection, namely that Christ already offered all that was needed for sin.  The problem with this view is that it contains only a half-truth in that misunderstands what it means to say that Christ has redeemed us.  Most simply view Redemption as simply “getting to go to heaven”, but that is way to general.  Redemption truthfully means that Christ, through the infinite merits of His Divine Personality, came to repair His work that sin has ruined.  In short, Christ came to make reparation.  This work could have been done alone, but He instead willed to have accomplices in His work of reparation. 

Becoming Accomplices of Christ

Those accomplices are not just His Mother or the Apostles, but every Christian.  Every Christian is grafted onto Christ, not as individuals but as members of His Mystical Body, the same Body of which He is the Head.  What happens to the Head then likewise happens to the body.  If the Head performed acts of reparation, so too then must the body, for They are the Whole Christ.  This intimate union of Head and Body means that the members continue His acts of reparation.

This helps us to understand what is often viewed as a confusing statement by St. Paul, namely that he is “adding to what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” (Col 1:24).  The lack is not in Christ as Head, but in His Mystical Body.  The Body must too be afflicted by participating in the acts of reparation of the Head.  Only then can the Head and Body be truly one.

We see then that reparation is obligatory because it creates a unity between Christ and Christians.  This obligation extends not just to Reparation itself, but also to the way it is made—by suffering.  It is the will of God that Reparation occur through suffering because Christ chose that as the proper means.  A true Christian, while he may fear suffering, must see it for what it truly is, Divine currency.  Christ’s suffering is the gold standard that gives value to the currency of suffering, but we must nevertheless spend it, or more accurately be spent by it, ourselves.  He has raised Christians to such an immense dignity that they become other Christ’s, not by being nice to other people, but by suffering with Him.  If we suffer with Him, then we shall reign with Him (2 Tim 2:12).  Suffering is the glue that holds the Mystical Body together.

What happens when this obligation is ignored or forgotten?  The answer is much unnecessary suffering, or, to put it more accurately, useless suffering.  Because suffering is the currency by which the obligation of Reparation is purchased, it is an inevitability.  But not just any suffering will do.  It is only suffering that is willingly accepted can buy Reparation.  This is why living in the unique time that we find ourselves, we must put all of this suffering to good use, namely Reparation.

When Christians fail to offer Reparation then things like the Coronavirus happen.  God never will give up on uniting us with His Son so that we can share in His glory.  He will even allow things like plagues to grip the world so that Christians might recapture their roles as Reparators.  That is why all of us should be focused on making acts of Reparation right now.  Everyone is going to be called on to make sacrifices in the coming weeks, but only those who submit to the Provident designs of God will make Reparation.  It does not require us to understand the whole plan, only to say “Thy will be done” each time we are called upon to suffer.  No one knows how long this will all last, but we can say that it will be shorter when Christians embrace the obligation of Reparation.

A More Perfect World?

Atheism, Lent, Passion of Christ, The Life of Jesus, , ,

One of the go-to arguments against the existence of God is the presence of evil in the world.  The atheistic interlocutor looks at the world, sees evil and concludes that there is no God.  Such a conclusion rests upon a primary assumption, namely that he can conceive of a more perfect world, a world without suffering.  Therefore either God is a cold-blooded tyrant or He does not exist.  Given how often such an argument is given, we must be prepared to meet it, but not in the usual way.  Too often theists respond to the conclusions rather than the assumption.  In this essay we will challenge the notion that God could have made a more perfect world.  Can we really conceive of a world in which there is no evil and, if so, then would that world be more perfect than this one? 

To conceive of a world with no evil, at least on the surface seems relatively simple.  But we must be prepared to admit that the world would be vastly different than our own.  Not just in that it lacked evil, but that its physical properties (if it could have any at all) would be vastly different than are own. 

The Argument of the Head

Evil, properly conceived, is a lack of a good that should otherwise be there.  In a physical world of many physical beings the avoidance of at least some physical evils is an impossibility.  This topic is treated more fully in another essay, but the gist of the issue is that material things are by definition limited things and this limitation combined with a desire for self-preservation means that there will always be a lack in some creatures.  There is a single piece of bread and two people.  At least one of them (or possibly both if they split it) will experience the evil of hunger.  It is pointless to argue that the world could have an unlimited amount of bread because that will result in the evil of something else being lacking.  A physical world will always experience some lack and therefore some evil.

In a material world, one being’s good can be another being’s evil.  Not all relationships can be symbiotic.  The man who is hungry will experience the evil of thorn pricks from the bush that grows them in order to protect its berries from being plucked.  The virus that causes the flu will embed itself in a host and replicate for its own good but the host will experience sickness.

Usually the objection to the evil in the world is related to moral evils, that is, the evils we bring upon ourselves and inflict upon others.  The man who overeats will experience the evil of heart disease and the man who, in protecting his family from an intruder, will experience the evil of being stabbed.  These moral evils may results from the free will responses to physical evils (looters who raid stores after a storm for example) or strictly out of malice.  Either way, they are the result of the free will of someone.

A good God may give the power to use free will, which is good.  But the creatures that have the power may come in conflict with each other in how they use it.  God gave the power and is in a certain sense the cause of power in the action, but He is not the cause of the action itself.  A man who sells a gun to another is responsible for the man having the gun, but this does not mean He is responsible for how it is used.

While we cannot imagine a material world with no physical evils, we might imagine one in which there are no moral evils.  But this would result ultimately in the loss of free will.  A world in which all the goods are limited always carries with it the possibility of misapprehending and misusing those goods.  God could intervene each time someone tried to do something evil, but this would make free will conditioned and thus not totally free.

Our interlocutor would now be hard pressed to imagine a physical world that includes beings with free will in it that does not also include the presence of some evil.  Even if he can come up with one, he cannot prove it that it is more perfect than our own because perfect implies some knowledge of purpose.  Just as you cannot speak of a more perfect pair of shoes until you know what shoes are for, so you cannot speak of a world that is more perfect than our own until you know what the world’s purpose is.  In fact when we begin to examine the world’s purpose, we find that it is perfectly fitting that it contains evil

To say that the world has a purpose is really to say that the world is not an end but a means.  A perfect world would be one in which it prepares its inhabitants for the Real World that is to follow.  It must be a world that mirrors the goodness of the Real World just enough to invoke desire in its inhabitants, but not so much that they feel completely at home in it.  The Real World is one of an eternal communion of self-giving love.  This world must be a training ground that makes that self-giving love possible.  The limited nature of the physical world such as it is makes it possible for this self-giving love, but not without a willingness to suffer some lack for the sake of the beloved.   This willingness must mean that there are actual evils present in the world, even if not all love leads to also suffering from those evils.

The Argument of the Heart

What has been offered to this point is an argument of the head.  A mere “theistic” response is not adequate and only a Christian explanation will do.  God desired to make an “argument of the heart” in order to drive this point home.  This “argument of the heart” is the Passion and Death of Our Lord.  To show the path to the Real World, God Himself stepped into ours in order to show us the way.  He experience evil firsthand and used that suffering illuminating a path through this world marked by suffering.  

With the Passion and death of Christ suffering becomes a necessary component of the escape plan into the Real World.  In our suffering, we, in both a metaphorical and real sense, share in Christ’s suffering.  His suffering was entirely voluntary so that when we suffer, even involuntarily, it signals to us the depth of the love He has for us.  Without suffering we would not know what it was like for Him and would never grasp His great love.  Not only that, but He Who is the one in which all times are present, is really suffering with us.  The Passion is not just a past event but a current event for Him so that He (re)lives it in our very suffering.  He is the Lamb in the Real World that still walks about as though slain (c.f. Rev 5:6). 

The only acceptable answer to the problem of Evil for a Christian is Christ.  The impassible and unchanging God in exercising His omnipotence and omnibenevolence came into our world and suffered with and for us.  He spoke not just to our heads but to our hearts telling us the depth of His desire to share His life with His creatures.  This argument of the heart is at the very core of what it means to live Lent intentionally.  It is the time of reflecting on Christ’s Passion and coming to a greater knowledge of the truth of the nature of the Real World.

Augustine and the Culture of Euthanasia

Bioethics, Culture of Life, End of Life, Human Dignity, , ,

Nearly sixteen centuries after its publication, St. Augustine’s City of God remains a seminal text in Christian political philosophy.  With the Fall of Rome as his backdrop, the Doctor of Grace contrasts the forces at work that seek to claim men’s souls.  History, from the Fall of the Angels to the Fall of Rome, has consisted of battle between the City of God and the City of Man.  From the vantage point of over a millennium and a half, one can see how, using the Augustine’s principles, Christendom emerged as the City of God dominated the City of Man.  But we seem to be living in a time where the transition is going in reverse and the weeds of secularism are choking out the wheat of Christendom so that Augustine’s text can serve as a blueprint of sorts for restoring the City of God and rebuilding a Christian society.

Without diving into all of the themes Augustine presents, the focus will be on his opening theme: suffering.  Why, in introducing the two cities, would Augustine choose to focus on suffering?  As he points out, the sack of Rome led to seemingly indiscriminate sufferings; both the good and the bad, the Christian and the Pagan suffered.  Suffering doesn’t seem to distinguish them at all.  But when we look not at the nature of the sufferings, but the response of the sufferer, we find great differences.  He says, “though the sufferings are the same, the sufferers remain different.  Virtue and vice are not the same even if they undergo the same treatment…What matters is the nature of the sufferer not the nature of the sufferings.”  So then suffering becomes like a great identification card enabling us to determine residency in either of the two cities.  

The Two Cities

Why this is so becomes apparent once we grasp that ultimately, the two cities are distinguished by their loves.  The “two cities were created by two kinds of love: the earthly city was created by self-love reaching the point if contempt for God, the Heavenly City by the love of God carried as far as contempt of self…The one city loves its own strength shown in its powerful leaders; the other says to its God ‘I will love You, my Lord, my strength.”  For Augustine suffering is brought about when men love the world more than God, the City of Man more than the City of God.  The good and bad suffer together because even the good (even if to a much lesser degree) love this world rather than despising it.

Both the Christians and non-Christians were equally affected but the sufferings of the Christians have “tended to their moral improvement because they are viewed through the eyes of faith.”   For the residents of the City of God suffering becomes an opportunity for growth in virtue and holiness.  “Viewed through the eyes of faith,” sufferings become necessary because they are the most expedient (i.e. most gentle and most merciful) way that God naturalizes us as residents in the heavenly city.  They may be free from criminal and godless wickedness they still see that they are not so far removed as to not to deserve to suffer temporal ills for them.

The residents of the City of Man see suffering as the greatest of all evils.  Rather than viewing them as opportunities, they see them as something to be avoided at all costs, even to the point of self-inflicted death.  From within this context Augustine visits the question of noble suicide within Roman culture.  Drawing from two historical examples at key turning points in Roman history, Augustine shows why suicide is always wrong.  His first case study is Lucretia.  After becoming a victim of rape she killed herself and Rome celebrated the nobility in doing so.  Augustine asks why should she, who was innocent, have suffered a worse punishment than the offender?  “One does not take vengeance on oneself for another’s crime.”  To suffer some injustice and then commit another injustice, even against oneself, is like killing the innocent.

His second example is Cato who killed himself as a political act, a steady refusal to live in a Rome led by Caesar.   As the prototypical Stoic, he thought happiness was only to be found in escaping the body and not something that was achieved in the soul through the body.

The City of God and the Culture of Euthanasia

But he does more than simply prove the immorality of suicide.  He also shows how one might argue against a suicide culture.  In this way he provides us with a blueprint for overcoming a Culture of Euthanasia.  In both of his case studies Augustine chose to focus on “cold-blooded” suicides.  Both Lucretia and Cato were deliberate suicides, not merely acts of impassioned despair.  Augustine thinks there is nothing noble about killing oneself and a culture that elevates it as such is a culture that bestows victimhood on its members.  He wants to empower men and women so that they can be truly noble in facing their sufferings, even the final ones, head-on.

Augustine’s argument and ours as well depends upon strong Christian witness.  If we are to overcome the Culture of Euthanasia we must preach that the only “sweet death” is one that opens wide the door to eternal life.  We cannot “accompany” someone who chooses to kill themselves because it is accompanying a lie that says that God does not use the death He has chosen for us as a means to bring about life.  Instead we should accompany them in their sufferings by encouraging them to dying with true nobility, the nobility of Christ.  Dying with dignity is dying as conformed to Christ.  We will never overcome the emerging Culture of Euthanasia until we suffer like true Christians and encourage others to do the same.  This was Augustine’s way and it needs to be ours too.   

On Hurricanes and Divine Judgment

God's Will, Mercy, Purgatory, Redemption, Suffering, , ,

Preparations are under way throughout much of the East Coast of the United States for the arrival of Hurricane Florence.  Houses are being boarded up, supplies are being purchased and evacuation plans are being executed.  Meanwhile “fire and brimstone” preachers throughout the country are preparing their sermons about Florence bringing with her the strong winds of Divine Wrath.  These foreboding missives usually greatly miss their mark and bring with them not fear, but mirth, as both the world and Christians alike laugh at them.  Hilarity, that is, until they realize that these prophets of gloom might actually have a point, even if they have failed typesetting their message in its proper context.

We cannot be too quick to dismiss these preachers of peril.  Be it earthquakes (c.f. Ps 17:8, Is 13:13), droughts (c.f. Jer 3:2), floods or calamities in general (c.f. Is 24:5), Scripture is unambiguous in its account of God using natural calamities in order to punish sinners.  Plus, we find a similar echo among the preaching of the saints.  St. Basil said, that “No one troubles himself about inquiring why drought, lightning, hail, are sent down upon us; they are sent us on account of our sins and because we preserve an impenitent heart.”  St. Anselm meanwhile suggested that “By offending God we not only excite His anger but the anger of all creation.”  We could multiply the examples, but the point is that there is an important truth that needs to be heard.

Setting the Proper Context

The problem then is not that what they are saying is untrue, it is that it lacks the proper context.  At the heart of the Christian message is a point that is so foundational that we can easily overlook it.  Death, although considered an evil in itself, is not the worst thing that can happen to you.  The worst thing that can happen to you is that you end up in hell.   But there is, of course, the flip side of that coin.  The best thing that could possibly happen to you is to enter into Eternal Life with God.  What this means for the question at hand is that there really can be no meaningful discussion about “innocent children” who are killed.  They will get their reward.  A reward that, when they look back on their suffering and untimely death, will make those things seem so disproportionately small compared to the bliss they are enjoying.  They will even be grateful it happened because it was the doorway into their present state.  No sane person would ever complain that their liberator was too rough in granting them free from captivity.

Likewise those who die in unrepentance also receive what they deserve.  But even their death is a mercy.  God knows that they will continue to go on sinning only increasing their sufferings in hell.  So, in His abundant mercy, He puts an end to it so that they do no further harm to themselves.  He also puts an end to not only their offense against Him, but their offense against their neighbors whom they invite into sin with them.  Both justice and mercy at all times.  But we must also look to the survivors, both “innocent” and guilty alike.  How can we reconcile this aspect of punishment with the tremendous sufferings that they will have to endure?

Just as our imaginary interlocutor makes the distinction between the dead and the survivors, so too must we mark the difference between the living and the dead.  For those that die, their punishment or lack thereof is eternal.  But temporal punishments are wholly different.  God issues those for the express purpose of leading to the individual to conversion.  As the Doctor of the Church St. Alphonsus Liguori put it,  “my brethren, let us convince ourselves of what I have undertaken to show you today, namely, that God does not afflict us in this life for our injury but for our good, in order that we may cease from sin, and by recovering His grace escape eternal punishment.”   As the tolerant and loving Messiah once told us: the path to destruction is wide so that He must at times give a foretaste of this destruction in order that people will rebuild on the narrow path (c.f Mt 7:13).  Comfort in this fallen world rarely leads to comfort in the next.

The Good News and the Bad News

Denial of what has been said so far amounts to a denial of another foundational element of the Christian message—the Good News is really that includes the bad news.  Sufferings are inevitable in this world, but Christ liberated us from, not suffering, but useless suffering.  But it is only useful when it is accepted in a spirit of penance.  Otherwise it does have an air of cruelty about it, but only in our steady refusal of reality.  United with Christ however it carries with it the fragrance of freedom.

This is why the objection that these natural disasters seem rather indiscriminant won’t do.  They are part and parcel to God’s Providence.  Contained within the chaos of the calamity, are personal invitations to penance.  Penance that comes from the hands of God not only pays a debt to Divine justice, but heals the effects of the sin within each individual person.  The sufferings are only to the degree that they are needed for this purpose and no more.  There is both justice and mercy, neither of which can exist without the other.

For those outside the path of the hurricane, I close with a quote from gentle Jesus.  When His disciples asked him about the fate of a group of calamitous Galileans, He warned them “unless you do penance, you will likewise perish” (Lk 13:3).  The circumstances are different, but the invitation remains the same—do penance so that you can enter into eternal life.  The Hound of Heaven will not cease to hunt you until you are safely within the room of His Father’s house.