School of Suffering

Trying to make sense out of suffering

02/20/2024

Since we have begun the season of suffering, also known as Lent, I would like to share with you a series of homilies on the topic of suffering. Now, admittedly, we Catholics perform lots of strange practices in our religion, but nothing seems as other-worldly as voluntary suffering: abstaining from meat on Fridays of lent, fasting on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, giving up watching television, video games, social media, donating more to help the poor, etc. Why do we do such outlandish acts that make others, even other Christians, scratch their heads in bewilderment? Isn’t there enough suffering in the world; why go looking for more? The simple answer is because Jesus said so in Mt 16:24, paraphrasing our Lord: “Pick up your cross and follow me, if you would my disciple be.”

Now, that is a helpful answer for Catholic Christians, but we can ask the same question regarding the rest of the world. In particular why do the innocent suffer? Yesterday, I had the funeral of a premature baby who died shortly after birth. How do the parents of that little baby boy make sense of the suffering of their innocent child? What could be more senseless? And this is no theoretical or academic inquiry because human suffering is undoubtedly the strongest argument against the existence of a good God. Who has not cried out in anguish in a moment of acute pain: “How could God let this happen to me? If God is supposed to be good, how can he stand by and let the innocent suffer?”

C. S. Lewis put this case against God in its starkest possible terms in his book The Problem of Pain. While Lewis was still an atheist, he believed: “[Human ] history is largely a record of crime, war, disease, and terror, with just sufficient happiness interposed to give [people], while it lasts, an agonised (sic) apprehension of losing it, and, when it is lost, the poignant misery of remembering it” (p. 2). And then speaking of the human race collectively, he argues: “The [human] race is doomed…for the universe, they tell us, is running down, and will sometime be a uniform infinity of homogenous matter at low temperature. All stories will come to nothing; all life will turn out in the end to have been a transitory and senseless contortion upon the idiotic face of infinite matter” (p. 3). Or, as Wesley said to Princess Buttercup in the movie, “The Princess Bride,” “Life is pain, your highness. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.” That is, atheists would argue there is no sense in suffering. Anyone who says so is using it as a marketing gimmick to make money.

Over and against that perspective I would like to look at pain and suffering from three different angles to find some sense in it. First we will explore unavoidable suffering, especially the ultimate suffering called death. I like to say: “No one is getting out of here alive.” Venerable Archbishop Fulton Sheen once described our voluntary sacrifices as little deaths or dress rehearsals for the final act of our lives, namely, death. When we suffer we practice our lines until we say them perfectly, before we go on stage and take our final breath. Second, we will consider sufferings that are not necessary but voluntary. Some pains we pick. I mean suffering like exercise, eating salads, sleeping sufficiently, drinking more water and less soft drinks, piano lessons, football practice, etc. M. Scott Peck, opened his classic The Road Less Traveled with these memorable lines: “Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths” (p. 15). Incidentally, Peck puts a footnote at the end of that sentence and elaborates: “The first of the ‘Four Noble Truths’ which Buddha taught was ‘Life is suffering'.” Some suffering we seek.

Thirdly, I want to examine more closely Christian suffering per se, that is, as a form of imitatio Christi, the imitation of Christ. St. Paul put it eloquently to the Colossians, writing: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church” (Col 1:24). Of course, this understanding of Christian suffering flies in the face of the so-called “health and wealth gospel.” Have you heard of this new trend in Christianity, more importantly, do you subtly subscribe to it? It is the belief that God only wants us to be rich and happy. But if that is true, then God’s own Son was the most cursed man who lived since he lived and died penniless and persecuted. C. S. Lewis puts the record straight by quoting George MacDonald, who taught: “The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their suffering might be like His” (The Problem of Pain, vii). That is, Jesus did not come to make us rich and famous. He came to make us holy and humble. That goal requires all three kinds of suffering: involuntary, voluntary, and Christian.

Let me share with you a particularly painful episode in my life that taught me the inestimable value of suffering. The summer of 1991 I was enrolled in the Clinical Pastoral Education program (CPE for short) for chaplains at U.A.M.S. in Little Rock. Part of that program involved group therapy sessions, which I hated. Basically, everyone was expected to share their deepest, darkest secrets, whether you wanted to or not. The session typically began with everyone seated in chairs in a large circle, and a long awkward silence ensued. Eventually someone would crack and speak or ask a question. Immediately all eyes would turn to them, and they would find themselves on the hot seat. People would pepper them with questions probing and poking their feelings until they finally shared something especially personal and intimate. I usually kept my hands in my pockets where I could feel my rosary beads and prayed for the whole grueling hour.

One day it was my turn in front of the firing squad of interrogators. I tried to keep my sharing surface-level and sweet. But they would not have it. I don’t remember their exact questions, but they stripped away all my protective layers and walls, until someone finally asked me, “Why do you want to become a priest?” And on the verge of tears, I blurted out, half-sobbing, “Because I love the Church!” And then the dam broke, and the tears flowed freely. For the first time in my life I admitted something I had believed deeply but had never noticed or articulated. I love the Catholic Church, and I would die for her. To this day I am still in shock how my answer surprised me, embarrassed me, and yet also made me proud. But I am convinced that self-discovery would not have been possible without the emotional pain and suffering, the awkwardness and the anguish, of feeling like a frog spread naked and dissected in a high school anatomy class. And I am forever grateful for that excruciating experience that taught me the truth about my vocation.

There are two ways to learn something. We can read about other people’s experiences in books, at a safe distance, but that is not the best way. Or, we can learn things in the school of hard knocks, the school of suffering. The lessons we learn there – where pain is our professor – we will never forget. And those will be the most important lessons in life. C. S. Lewis reminisces over the death of his wife, Joy Grisham, and the unendurable pain he felt, writing: “Nothing less will shake a man – or at any rate a man like me – out of his merely verbal thinking and his merely notional beliefs. He has to be knocked silly before he comes to his senses. Only torture will bring out the truth. Only under torture does he discover it himself” (A Grief Observed, 38). It took CPE to knock me silly so I could come to my senses about how much I loved the Church. I was finally enrolled in the school of hard-knocks, the school of suffering. And this school offers a curriculum of three courses: (1) involuntary suffering, (2) voluntary suffering, and (3) Christian suffering. And our only professor will be pain.

Praised be Jesus Christ!