Redemptive Suffering

Long read, but worth it.

"What is "Redemptive Suffering"

By Mary Healy

Some people call her the Mother Teresa of Mexico. Madre Inés Valdivia González is in her late eighties but still runs an orphanage for children with mental and physical disabilities, Casa Hogar La Divina Providencia, near Mexico City. Despite the poverty and suffering within its walls, the Casa is a place of joy, laughter, and peace. Among the many miracles that have taken place there is the following, which Madre Inés recounted to a missionary friend of mine who often visits the orphanage.

A man visited the Casa who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He shared with Madre that since he did not have much time left on earth, he realized he had better get right with God. He decided to visit the orphanage as a way of doing a good deed. She gave him a tour of the facility, including the upper floor where the most severely handicapped children live. Madre Inés considers these her most precious charges, believing that their souls are already in some way in God’s presence. Most of them simply lie on cots, drooling, incapable of movement or speech.

As the visitor walked through the room, the limp hand of one boy brushed against him, so he sat down and held the boy’s hand for a few minutes as the child gazed intently into his eyes. He felt good reaching out to this profoundly disadvantaged person. After a few minutes he smiled and walked on.
The next day he woke up feeling better than he had in some time. The next day he felt even better, and the next day better still. He went back to his doctor and after some tests was informed that his body was completely cancer-free. When he called Madre Inés to share the good news, she told him that shortly after his visit, the boy whose hand he had held had passed away.
Grace Overflowing
This story illustrates the profound spiritual interconnection that exists among the members of the body of Christ. Did that handicapped boy in some mysterious way offer his life for the healing of the man who visited him? It is impossible to know for sure, but Catholic tradition has always recognized that the suffering of one member, lovingly offered up in Christ, can be a source of great grace for others. Because of our union with Christ, we are united with one another, and grace overflows from one to another.

Suffering therefore has inestimable value for those who are in Christ. But how does our appreciation for the value of suffering accord with prayer for healing? If suffering has great value, why should we ever pray for healing? Is it not better to embrace sickness for the good of ourselves and others? To answer these questions we must look at what Scripture teaches about suffering and its relationship to healing.

The Christian understanding of the value of suffering is rooted in the words of Jesus: “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:38; see also 16:24). To be a Christian is to walk in the footsteps of the suffering Son of Man, to accompany him on the Way of the Cross. Suffering is an inevitable part of every human life, but God uses it to purify and perfect his children. The Letter to the Hebrews affirms that even Jesus, “Son though he was … learned obedience from what he suffered” (5:8). Of course, Jesus was never disobedient. Yet obedience, like all virtue, comes to perfection only by being tested in difficult circumstances. Like a coal that is crushed under enormous pressure until it becomes a diamond, Christ’s human nature, crushed under his passion, was brought to an infinite perfection of love and obedience to God. For a Christian, all the more is suffering needed for our growth to maturity as sons and daughters of God. “The Lord disciplines him whom he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives” (Heb 12:6). Suffering humbles us and softens our rough edges. It is God’s chisel to shape the rough-hewn rock that we are into the magnificent statue he has created us to be.

Even more, suffering is an invitation to share in Christ’s passion. Paul understood this deeply. He did not just endure afflictions but positively desired them: “For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as refuse, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him … that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (Phil 3:8–10). Paul experienced that suffering had a unique capacity to soften his heart and configure him to the self-giving love of Jesus. Suffering therefore prepares us for the glory that will one day be ours: we are “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom 8:17).

Yet another gift is that when our suffering is offered in union with Christ, it becomes a means of grace for others. Paul tells the Corinthians, “If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort” (2 Cor 1:6). Paul means more than that he is willing to endure the hardships of an itinerant apostolic life to bring them the Gospel. His sufferings actually become a conduit of saving grace for them (see 2 Cor 4:10–12). In his Letter to the Colossians he develops this insight further: “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” (1:24). This is a startling claim! How can anything be lacking in Christ’s afflictions? As St. John Paul II noted, Paul does not mean that Christ’s redemption is incomplete itself. Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice is all-sufficient to redeem the whole world (Heb 10:10). Yet in the Lord’s overflowing generosity, he gives us the privilege of participating in his work of redemption. “Those who share in the sufferings of Christ preserve in their own sufferings a very special particle of the infinite treasure of the world’s Redemption, and can share this treasure with others,” according to St. John Paul
Two Kinds of Suffering
There is a distinction among biblical passages about suffering that often goes unnoticed today. When Jesus exhorts his disciples to expect suffering and to rejoice in it, he is referring to the trials associated with persecution for the sake of the Gospel (see Mt 5:11; 10:24–25; Lk 6:21–23; 21:12-19; Jn 15:18–21; 16:33). They are what might be called apostolic sufferings — the persecution, mockery, and hardships that often go with being a Christian and sharing the Gospel with others. For example, Jesus said, “Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you and revile you, and cast out your name as evil, on account of the Son of man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven” (Lk 6:22–23). When, in contrast, Jesus encounters physical or emotional sickness, he invariably responds with healing. He confronts sickness as an evil to be overcome rather than a good to be embraced.

Likewise when Paul speaks about embracing his afflictions, they are those resulting from apostolic labors and persecution — imprisonment, beatings, stoning, shipwreck, danger, sleepless nights, hunger and thirst, exposure, anxiety for the churches (see 2 Cor 11:21–28; 1 Cor 4:11–13; 2 Tm 3:12). Catholic tradition has always regarded it as legitimate to extend the theology of redemptive suffering to every kind of suffering, including sickness. However, it does not follow that our response to sickness should be the same as our response to apostolic suffering, as will be seen below.
Don’t Waste Your Pain
My friend Robin Beck has experienced the grace of redemptive suffering in a powerful way. She suffers from scoliosis, arthritis, osteoporosis, and several other painful conditions. When she became a Catholic just a few years ago, she was thrilled to learn that her afflictions could be used to empower her prayer for others. She does not pray for healing for herself because she feels called to use her sufferings as weapons in her arsenal as she intercedes for grace and mercy for others. She uses her pain to maximum effect. She says things like: “My knee has been sore all week. That’s for you. My hip is for my cousin’s daughter who is going through a divorce.” She writes half-jokingly:

One of the messages I have received from the Lord in the midst of my suffering is, “Don’t waste your pain!” Translated: Offer it all up! A hospital stay, especially when surgery is involved, is a great time to plan on praying for everyone you know. When the nurse walks in your room holding a hypo that’s bigger than a knitting needle one would use for a hippopotamus, pick a name from your prayer list and offer it up for them. After the ninetieth time of being poked (and when all your veins have collapsed), you’ll be in such a state of grace you won’t care what they’ve come to jab you with. If you stay focused on using the gift of pain for others your hospital stay will become a holy pilgrimage where you do the Spirit’s bidding in the lives of others. Never doubt for one minute how much that will please the Father.

How much wasted suffering there is in the world today! How many people are lying in hospitals or nursing homes simply enduring their pain and loneliness, or even letting bitterness fester. If only they knew how much potential their suffering has for empowering the Church’s mission to bring the light of Christ into the world. Often it is because no one has told them; no one has called upon their intercessory muscle. If they lovingly offer their sufferings in union with Christ, especially if they offer it for specific intentions, their seemingly useless lives will actually be bearing abundant fruit. As one priest I know says, “Their lives are not a waste, they are the Marine Corps of the Church!”

Any individual or parish that is initiating a ministry or evangelistic endeavor would do well to look for such long-suffering people and enlist their intercessory help, supporting them in turn with prayer and following up with regular reports on how their prayers are being answered.

Human Physicians and the Divine Physician

The enormous intercessory potential of suffering makes the question even more acute: Why should we pray for healing at all, when suffering can be so fruitful?

First, there is an important distinction: Christian tradition has never regarded suffering as good in itself. Rather, suffering, pain, sickness, and death are evils that came into the world because of sin. As St. John Paul explained, “Suffering cannot be divorced from the sin of the beginnings, from what St. John call ‘the sin of the world’ (Jn 1:29), from the sinful background of the personal actions and social processes in human history.” Suffering, pain, sickenss, and death were not part of God’s original intention for the sons and daughters he created in his image. They came into the world not by God’s will but as a result of rebellion against God’s will. But the amazing good news proclaimed in the Gospel is that God is able to bring good even out of evil. “We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28). The apex of this divine power is manifested in the Cross, where the unimaginable evil and pain inflicted on God’s beloved Son, embraced by him in love, became the source of salvation for the whole world.

The recognition that suffering is an objective evil is the basis for all human efforts to alleviate it. Throughout Scripture God instructs his people again and again to relieve suffering: “share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, cover him … satisfy the desire of the afflicted” (Is 58:6–10); visit the sick and imprisoned (see Mt 25:31–46). Catholics through history have taken this instruction very seriously, building an immense array of hospitals, medical clinics, hospices, and other ministries with the express purpose of healing the sick insofar as possible and lessening every form of suffering.

Why then, it must be asked, would we do so much on a natural level to heal sickness, and yet hesitate to seek supernatural healing? We understand that there is no contradiction between the redemptive value of suffering and our intense human efforts to bring healing. Why would we think there is a contradiction between the redemptive value of suffering and asking God for healing? What would you think of a doctor who, upon diagnosing a patient with cancer, says to him: “Sorry, I’m not going to treat you because it’s better that you simply accept this cross in your life. Offer it up.” He’d be fired on the spot! Why then would any disciple of Jesus — one who has access to unlimited divine grace and power — upon hearing that someone is ill, respond in like manner?

Likewise, we should examine our response when confronted with illness in our own bodies. Ironically, Catholics faced with illness usually have no hesitation in seeking medical treatment, yet many are reluctant to ask God for healing. They assume God must want them to suffer. They go to the doctor, but not to the Divine Physician. This reluctance is often based on a distorted view of God, as a God eager to mete out the punishment we deserve.

In reality he is a God who is rich in mercy, who delights in lavishing on us the grace we don’t deserve. Our first response to sickness, then, should be to do battle against it through faith and prayer. Jesus’ response to illness and infirmity in the Gospels is a challenge to our attitudes of passivity. In the sick who besieged him he saw children of God who were bound up and blocked from the fullness of life God had for them. He “released” them, “opened” their eyes or ears or mouth, and “rebuked” sickness (see Mt 9:30; Mk 7:35; Lk 4:39; 14:4; Jn 9:10). After raising Lazarus from the dead he called his disciples in turn to “unbind” one who had been bound by the cords of death (Jn 11:44).

Catholic theology is often a matter of both/and rather than either/or. Is Jesus Christ fully God or fully man? Both (see Phil 2:6–8). Is our faith based on Scripture or Tradition? Both (2 Thes 2:15). Are we justified by faith or works? Both (Gal 2:15; Jas 2:24). Should we embrace our suffering in love or pray for healing with expectant faith? Both! (1 Pt 4:13; Jas 5:16).

When to Desist

Then is there ever a time to stop praying for healing? How do we discern when that is? There is no hard-and-fast rule that can cover every instance. Praying for healing is letting the Holy Spirit lead the dance, not following a rule book. But there are a couple of simple principles that may be helpful. First, the Lord will often give an interior sense that it is time to change the prayer. Especially when praying for people who have lived a full span of life, the grace they may need is to be ready to meet the Lord. After all, the human mortality rate is 100 percent. Second, we can pray differently when a sick or disabled person comes to a profound peace and joy in the midst of their suffering, no longer desiring healing because they see that the Lord is bringing great fruit out of their affliction. Their suffering has become a priestly offering in accord with Paul’s exhortation, “Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship” (Rom 12:1).
Let us never hesitate to ask for the help of the Divine Physician, any more than we should hesitate to go to earthly physicians. “Heal me, O Lord, and I shall be healed; save me, and I shall be saved; for you are my praise” (Jer 17:14).