Take nourishment from Christ and the Church

By Malea Hargett
Editor

Before suffering occurs in our lives, now is the time to learn about what Christ and his Church teaches about suffering and hope. As Timothy Keller says in  “Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering,” “We are all sufferers, or we will be.” 

The Holy Spirit can then bring these Scriptures and teachings to mind when things fall apart. Suffering does bring pain, but these truths can strengthen us. We must always remember that we never suffer alone. Emmanuel is translated to mean “God is with us.”

 

Scriptures

• “For this reason they stand before God’s throne and worship him day and night in his temple. The one who sits on the throne will shelter them. They will not hunger or thirst anymore, nor will the sun or any heat strike them. For the Lamb who is in the center of the throne will shepherd them and lead them to springs of life-giving water and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” (Revelation 7:15-17)

• “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there shall be no more death or mourning, wailing or pain, (for) the old order has passed away. The one who sat on the throne said, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’ Then he said, ‘Write these words down, for they are trustworthy and true.’” (Revelation 21:4-5)

• “You, Lord, are a shield around me; my glory, you keep my head high.” (Psalm 3:4)

 

Catechism of the Catholic Church

• “Faith in God the Father Almighty can be put to the test by the experience of evil and suffering. God can sometimes seem to be absent and incapable of stopping evil. But in the most mysterious way God the Father has revealed his almighty power in the voluntary humiliation and Resurrection of his Son, by which he conquered evil.” (CCC 272)

• “Moved by so much suffering Christ not only allows himself to be touched by the sick, but he makes their miseries his own: ‘He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.’ But he did not heal all the sick. His healings were signs of the coming of the kingdom of God. They announced a more radical healing: the victory over sin and death through his Passover. On the cross Christ took upon himself the whole weight of evil and took away the ‘sin of the world,’ of which illness is only a consequence. By his passion and death on the cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering: it can henceforth configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive Passion.” (CCC 1505)   

 

Saints

• “O Mother, it’s very easy to write beautiful things about suffering, but writing is nothing, nothing! One must suffer in order to know! I really feel now that what I’ve said and written is true about everything. … It’s true that I wanted to suffer much for God’s sake, and it’s true that I still desire this.” (St. Therese de Lisieux)

• ”Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved.” (St. John of the Cross)

 

Catholic authors

• “The Lord did not create suffering. Pain and death came into the world with the fall of man. But after man had chosen suffering in preference to the joys of union with God, the Lord turned suffering itself into a way by which man could come to the perfect knowledge of God.” (Thomas Merton)

• “God is out front. He is in our tomorrows, and it is tomorrow that fills people with fear. Yet God is already there. All of tomorrows of our life have to pass through him before they can get to us.” (F.B.  Meyer, quoted by L.B. Cowman in “Streams in the Desert” [Zondervan, 1997])

• "God doesn’t reveal his grand design. He reveals himself.” (Frederick Buechner, quoted by Philip Yancey in “The Question That Never Goes Away” [Zondervan, 2013])

“You don’t really know Jesus is all you need until Jesus is all you have.” (Timothy Keller, “Waking with God Through Pain and Suffering” [Dutton, 2013])

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