The Christian meaning of human suffering

“Suffering is in a certain sense the destiny of man, who is born suffering, spends his life in afflictions and reaches his end, eternity, through death, which is a great purification through which we must all pass. Hence the importance of discovering the Christian meaning of human suffering”.”. These words of St. John Paul II, spoken on February 2, 1985, will never lose their timeliness. At first glance, they might seem to convey a pessimistic view of man and his existence. But if we are sincere with the reality that we so often live, we recognize that they illuminate in a certain way an inescapable part of our human experience.

We all want to be happy, to have a great life and to enjoy it. However, the experience of suffering in life is inevitable, and we must constantly reckon with it. The Polish Pope also said in another place: “We have to be happy.“Suffering and death are part of the human experience, and it is futile and wrong to try to hide or discard them.”. He added: “On the contrary, each one must be helped to understand, in the concrete and difficult reality, its profound mystery." (Evangelium Vitae, 97).

So the proper perspective for situating ourselves in relation to this reality is not to raise questions about suffering in itself, or about whether or not we would like to suffer it, but about the profound questions that arise when we experience it. And these, in one way or another, have to do with the question of its meaning. As Robert Spaemann stated: “The theme ‘sense of suffering’ is identical to the theme: sense of what we do not want, of what no one can want for himself.”. The question is rather expressed in this way: what are we really looking for when we ask ourselves about the meaning of suffering? The proper perspective, in the face of the mystery it represents for us, is not to try to find the solution to a problem, but to open ourselves to a light that has been given to us.

The moral character of suffering

To advance in this perspective, it can help to see the relationship and the difference that exists between pain and suffering. The constitutive vulnerability, proper to the person, implies that reality “hurts” us, affects us, and this in all the dimensions and levels of our being: biological, affective, psychological and spiritual. But we do not identify or experience all these affections in the same way. In Greek, the word αλγος (algos). From this term derive a great variety of words that are currently used in the medical field related to the semantics of pain, such as fibromyalgia, neuralgia, lumbago, analgesic, etc. The term suffering, on the other hand, comes from παθος (pathos, in Latin: passio), which opens up the semantic field related to suffering, to what we identify as suffer. 

In other words, pain and suffering express profoundly human experiences, always related, but also distinguishable. The former implies the physiological reaction to harmful stimuli, while the latter is considered a reaction as a consequence of an experience that affects the person and implies the question of its meaning in the sufferer. Physical pain y moral suffering, as they have sometimes been called, combine sensitivity and affectivity, leading to the person suffering from a life stage to a ethical phase: “The initial physical entity unwraps the moral affectivity that leads the individual towards an internalization of one's own pain that leads to suffering, as a moment of free and conscious re-activity involving will” (Zucchi-Honings). The key to identifying suffering lies in the configuration of the affective and moral sphere of the suffering person.

Suffering is a step beyond the fact of experiencing pain. It is not enough for us to find the causes of our ailments. It is here that we see the moral character of the experience of suffering emerge, by motivating questions that imply for the sufferer the question of the meaning of what he or she lives and suffers: “Wherever we fail to integrate a given situation within a context of meaning, that is where the suffering begins”.” (Spaemann). Suffering has a moral character of the first order in people's lives because it puts us at stake in the search for the meaning and the “what for” of what we live. We cannot stifle the questions that these experiences raise in us: who am I that I suffer? What is the meaning, why do I suffer? What am I to do when suffering appears on the path of life?

The answer to the question of the mystery of suffering

As stated by Professor Livio Melina: “The human being can even endure pain; what he cannot endure is suffering deprived of meaning. And man suffers when he experiences disproportion in relation to his desire for fulfillment.”. But how can we find this meaning and the answer to the questions it raises? The way is made easier by recognizing that the word that best accompanies the reality of suffering is “mystery”.

This term usually refers to something that we cannot come to know, something unattainable for our capacity of understanding. However, what it expresses in relation to suffering is that we are faced with a reality whose meaning is hidden from us, and must be revealed to us: “The solution to this dramatic question can never be offered only in the light of human thought, because in suffering is contained the greatness of a specific mystery that only the Revelation of God can reveal to us.” (Samaritanus Bonus, I).

Therefore, we are not the ones who can unravel the answer to the questions raised by the experience of suffering, but rather we must open ourselves to receive it. And from the Christian faith it is possible to listen to this answer that has been made known to us in the person of Jesus Christ. This is the way to enter into the Christian meaning of human suffering, as St. John Paul II explained in his Apostolic Letter Salvifici doloris (1984): “Christ gives the answer to the question about suffering and about the meaning of suffering, not only with his teachings, that is, with the Good News, but above all with his own suffering, which is integrated in an organic and indissoluble way with the teachings of the Good News. This is the ultimate and synthetic word of this teaching: “the doctrine of the Cross”.” (1 Corinthians 1:18)” (Salvifici Doloris, 18).

The core of redemption is not found in the overwhelming event of a very intense or unbearable pain, but the essential point lies in who Jesus of Nazareth is, and in the salvific and redemptive meaning that his suffering contains. Jesus Christ, being innocent, approached the world of human suffering, plunging himself willingly into it in a radical way, to the ultimate consequences. On the cross, Christ transfigured suffering by his redeeming love. The mystery of his passion and death is included in the paschal mystery. The eloquence of the resurrection manifests the victorious power of his self-giving for love, the sign of which are the signs of the passion that Jesus preserves in his risen body. The glory, which on the cross was totally veiled, shines forth in fullness through the resurrection, thus manifesting “the victorious power of suffering” (Salvifici Doloris, 25). 

Suffering has not disappeared after Christ's resurrection, but now we can live it united to him with a redemptive sense, until the new heavens and earth come, where there will be no death, no mourning, no crying, no pain, because the former has disappeared (cf. Revelation 21:4). Thus: “Although the victory over sin and death, achieved by Christ with his cross and resurrection does not abolish the temporal sufferings of human life, nor does it free from suffering the whole historical dimension of human existence, nevertheless, over that whole dimension and over every suffering this victory casts a new light, which is the light of salvation.” (Salvifici Doloris, 15). 

Do good to those who suffer

God's response to man on the meaning of suffering makes us sharers in the sufferings of Christ for the redemption of the world, and also opens for us a path of action in the gift of self out of love for those who suffer. Whether we are the needy because we suffer, or whether we are called not to pass by those in need, a dynamic of relationality emerges that involves us in the first person. The times of suffering in life are also times of relationships, in which a new gaze emerges, that of the “heart that sees,” characteristic of the Good Samaritan (cf. Samaritanus Bonus, II-III). 

The Christian sense of human suffering makes possible this gaze that discovers Jesus Christ himself in the one who suffers, as is indicated in the conclusion of the letter Samaritanus Bonus: “This vocation to love and care for others, which brings with it the gain of eternity, is explicitly announced by the Lord of life in this paraphrase of the Last Judgment: ”Receive the kingdom as your inheritance, for I was sick and you visited me. When, Lord? As often as you have done this to one of your least brothers, to one of your brothers who suffers, you have done it to me (cf. Mt 25:31-46).".

The reality of suffering will always remain shrouded in a certain mystery for us, but in the light of Christ's passion, death and resurrection it opens up a new meaning and a new hope to which we can open ourselves and in which we are made sharers. It also inaugurates a new way of acting towards those who suffer. It is true that we cannot take the place of those who suffer, but we can generate a relationship of help, listening and consolation, offering them all the good necessary to lift them from the wound of desolation and open in their hearts luminous cracks of hope. 

This is what, in a way, Sam Sagaz expressed in a critical moment of Tolkien's epic tale, at the end of that long road traveled with his friend Frodo Baggins, when faced with the tremendous weight that he carried and that prevented him from moving forward, plunged in the darkness of a terrible suffering, he said to him, moved by the deep love he had for him: “Come along, Mr. Frodo! I can't carry him for you, but I can carry you along with him - come on, dear Mr. Frodo!” (J.R.R. Tolkien).