Redemptive Suffering

The fear of suffering, pain, and death may seem like unconquerable mysteries. My time here at CPE [Clinical Pastoral Education] has helped me to understand, via experience, that they are not necessarily things that need to be conquered. No amount of faith excludes us from experience pain, loneliness, and death. Money, power, and other earthly things often make these three experiences worse as well.

With this in mind, I began to wonder if the words of Qoheleth are not as negative as they appear: “Vanity of vanities! All is vanity” (Ecc 1:2). Earthly things will pass which also means these things, both good and bad, will pass. Yet this does not ease the blow of the mystery of suffering and death. Even if they pass away they still remain with us our whole lives.

For me, this mystery is one that is only solved by the Cross. The cross is, for me, the foundation of my theology, the ministry I do. The cross is the Incarnational moment where love and suffering meet. Love, because “God is love” (1 Jn 4:16), and suffering, because the human condition is deeply affected by sin and death (Gen 3:16). Christ took upon Himself the entirety of our human condition. While this expressed itself in His person I believe it was brought to completion by His sacrifice. It was only in His death that He was able to “reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace through the blood of his cross” (Col 1:20).

How do I approach this theology? First, if Christ chose to take on all of humanity, He also took on pain, loneliness, and death in all completeness. He did not run from them but endured them and experienced them to the full. Thus any ministry inspired by Christ must be a ministry willing to encounter and experience all of the human condition.

Secondly, did not Christ, through His actions, reconcile all things to Himself? If this is the case, He also reconciled what is lowly and base to our human existence. Thus in ministry, encountering what is base, disgusting, and disturbing is an opportunity to encounter Christ in the same capacity as that which is lofty, beautiful, and joyful. There is no discrimination in what Christ assumed in our humanity. He became like us in all things but sin (cf. Heb 4:15).

As such, in my mind and in my ministry I attempt to approach a Catholic theology of suffering. The primary way is the Catholic view of suffering or, more specifically, redemptive suffering.

What do I mean by redemptive suffering? Only this: that our suffering when united to Christ shares in His mission of salvation. How is this so? Christ is married to the Church as Her spouse and the “two [have] become one flesh” (Gen 2:24). Moreover “no man hates his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, as Christ does the Church, because we are members of his body” (Eph 5:29-30, cf. Eph 5). We are by virtue of our baptism joined to Christ and the Church.

We are joined to the body of Christ such that we are one with Him. “This is a great mystery” (Eph 5:32). Yet Scripture proclaims that as Saul persecuted the “disciples of the Way” Christ himself said, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? … I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (Acts 9:4, 5). Lastly, Paul himself says, “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).

Christ entrusted His disciples with His Spirit to carry out His mission of salvation to the whole world and to all ages. The Church was established as His bride and He Himself is the head of the body. We are extensions of His Body. We share in the sufferings of those to whom we minister (and we ourselves also suffer). Christ identifies with us, especially with those who suffer (cf. Mt 25:40), should we not also identify with Him in turn?

Christ assumed humanity so as to redeem it, thus with confidence I say He also redeemed suffering. The suffering we experience can be joined to Christ who even after the Resurrection complained to Saul that He himself was being persecuted. Christ’s suffering continues in His Body, the Church, because we live in a world redeemed but not yet saved. We too, in joining our sufferings to Christ, suffer for the sake of His Body (cf. Col 1:24).

And indeed “he did this once for all when he offered himself” (Heb 7:27b). Thus we too “must present ourselves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Rom 12:1). This means that the suffering I experience in myself and others can be effective in Christ’s saving work for the one who suffers (and even myself). When I share in the suffering of another, I attempt to share in the suffering of both Christ and the individual.

If only I’d allow myself to do it more often.

Note: This post and ones following are part of a series I hope to begin. Namely I intent to explain, Scripturally, Catholic theology that I find has an active role in our lives. I further plan to reflect in ways deeper than the surface level, e.g., “God is love and thus we’re called to imitate Him.” In this particular piece I look at the notion of “redemptive suffering” and offering you a means of looking at it that’s reflective and applicable.

Matthew Heinrich

Matthew Heinrich

Matthew Heinrich is a deacon for the Archdiocese of Chicago. He enters his 13th year in seminary. He attended the high School seminary (Archbishop Quigley), went to St. Joseph (at Loyola), continued at Theological College in Washington DC (Catholic University of America) where he earned his PhL. He currently studies at Mundelein Seminary working towards his STB, STL. He loves philosophy, has studied Greek, and fell in love with Patristic thought. He is a huge Chicago fan--Cubs, Bears, Hawks (2013 Champs!), and Bulls. The views expressed by the author are his alone, they neither reflect those of the diocese he studies for nor at the seminary where he studies.

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7 thoughts on “Redemptive Suffering”

  1. Pingback: Silence in Nineveh - BigPulpit.com

  2. Thank you, Matthew. As a Catholic neophyte this is an area of understanding where I have most to learn. Your piece has helped me to see this: as His sufferings continue, so does His sacrifice. How precious is the holy Mass.

    1. Thank you as well.

      I really appreciate neophytes since I think your zeal and desire to name your faith gives me and us cradle-Catholics a lot to think about. Your formulation right here is really neat and memorable. I might steal it (and not pay roalties!)

  3. In my primary devotional focus, praying for the souls in purgatory*, I make great use of redemptive suffering as a focus both physically and mentally:

    Firstly, I’m that rarity among young men who suffers from fibromyalgia and fairly-crippling neuropathy. It’s impacted my ability to earn my degrees and hold down the jobs that I want, and it’s frankly the major reason that I don’t date, in that — as desperate as I am for love — I don’t want to submit any woman to this. That my friends have all abandoned me out of confusion of my pain (doctors and insurance don’t give pain medication to young men, because of trends on addiction, so I’m not a party animal, even if I drag myself through the pain to serve as a lector, usher, Knight of Columbus, etc…) doesn’t help, but I get a taste of what a wife would go through being the caretaker of my elderly widower father. Nevertheless, it remains in its own way a natural grace of mortification when trying to feel the Passion of the Lord for the sake of others’ souls without the violence of doing damage to oneself.

    Secondly, mentally, I can likewise always return to the “memory” of being dead myself when dealing with the souls of the dead, as one of the first stillborn infants (dead for about twenty minutes at birth) to revive or be resuscitated within an NICU (the official story and the private revelation that I can tell are somewhat different). That experience certainly lays at the heart of the development of my physical nerve issues, but it also gives me a unique faith focus, borne out of a century of family devotion, to center in on in a faith already centered so fully on resurrection. It’s probably no wonder that St. Lazarus (pity that Simon of Cyrene was never actually made a saint) is my main consideration for use in a religious name once I finish my current Lay Dominican formation!

    I don’t pretend to understand any of my pain or any of the history behind it. It’s bigger than I am — both in coming to define my life over the years and in theological terms — but I have come to be able to use it. I find that any praying of the Sorrowful Mysteries on the Rosary can take up to an hour, as I meditate to the point of ‘dialogue’ on the Five Wounds with the Lord, since each of those points is one that is also hampered by nerve and/or muscle damage on my own body…

    (*I actually have a beautiful story of realizing the sign that I received after using redemptive suffering basically to the point of collapse during the Feast of the Portiuncula to gather plenary indulgences for the souls of my family in Purgatory over last weekend, but that’s probably for telling another time…)

  4. Pingback: Pastoral Sharings: "21st Sunday in Ordinary Time" | St. John

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