The great value of suffering

IT just doesn’t make sense at first glance. Why would Christ tell us to deny ourselves and pick up a cross just to follow Him. (cfr. Mt 16,24) What’s so appealing about suffering that He’d ask us to embrace it? What hidden treasure is there in suffering that should draw our hearts to it instead of away from it?

We, of course, now know that suffering stems from our separation from God, who is our true source of joy and life. Because we often choose to act as if we are own “gods,” we bring about our own spiritual distance from him and as a consequence we suffer.

To make sense of this, let’s look at the bigger picture. We need to look back to the time of our creation and then forward to Christ’s redemptive mission. In the beginning, suffering was entirely absent from God’s plan. Our first parents existed in a state of original justice. They possessed profound gifts, including immortality, impassibility (the inability to experience physical or emotional pain), and perfect integrity.

They lived in absolute harmony with themselves, the world and their Creator. However, all of this was lost when they succumbed to the temptation of disobedience. Seduced by the father of lies, they attempted to assert their own will over God’s, thereby separating themselves from the divine source of life.

This rupture severed our intimate connection with the ultimate fountain of all good things, inevitably leading us into a reality marked by pain, sin, and physical decay. Yet despite this catastrophic betrayal, God’s overwhelming love for us never wavered. Yes, there was a period of anger, but His great love for us is so profound that He sent His Son to rescue us. His mercy always has the last word.

Because our sinfulness inherently leads us to suffering and death, the Son of God had to become man to address the root of the problem. As St. Paul explained, Christ emptied Himself to share in our humanity, ultimately enduring the agony and humiliation of death on the cross. Christ went to the extent of becoming like sin, without committing sin, if only to identify himself with us and offer us “the way, the truth and the life.”

Through His passion and death, Christ paid the ransom for our redemption. But He did much more. He radically transformed the meaning of suffering and death. What was once a tragic consequence of our separation from God has been converted by Christ into a powerful means of our salvation.

Christ provided the ultimate paradigm for how we can overcome our fundamental flaw of self-reliance. Our suffering, as long as it is united to the suffering of Christ, can now acquire a great redemptive value.

And so, we should not be too concerned about suffering in whatever form it comes to us. We should just learn how to unite our unavoidable sufferings with the suffering of Christ. That way, our sufferings become a necessary mechanism for our healing and reconciliation.

Bluntly said, when we embrace our hardships and unite them with Christ’s suffering, our pain can now act as the very cure that draws us back into communion with the Creator.

Consequently, we must readjust our perception of pain. Instead of viewing suffering as purely senseless, we should see it as a sacred invitation to “deny ourselves,” to empty ourselves so we can be filled with the spirit of God.

Consequently, we must readjust our perception of pain. Instead of viewing suffering as purely senseless, we should see it as an opportunity to empty ourselves so we can be transformed into “another Christ.”