OUR FAITH, THE FAITH OF OUR CHILDREN“I BELIEVED EVEN WHEN I SAID: I AM GREATLY AFFLICTED” (PS 115:10) FAITH AND SUFFERING

Introduction

We continue our journey of faith—a journey that now takes on the colors of the Lenten season. In previous retreats we saw that faith requires holy indifference and filial obedience. In this way, it becomes light for the mind, strength for the will, and guidance from Providence: “Everything is possible for the one who believes” (Mk 9:23)!

Now we must approach a more difficult truth: faith entails suffering. It involves suffering for our maturation (for it is not natural to think and live in a supernatural way), for our healing (sin is ultimately a form of unbelief), because we are tested (it is not easy to continue believing under pressure), and because of our confrontation with the forces of evil and the action of the Evil One (who does everything to oppose the will to serve with the will to dominate, to make us rely on ourselves instead of on God, to live for ourselves rather than for God).

This is why the path of Jesus was a Way of the Cross. This is also why we live Lent in order to strengthen our faith precisely in the Word of the Cross, which appears to the world as foolishness and weakness but is in reality the wisdom and power of God (1 Cor 1:25). For this reason, at the start of Holy Week, the Church wants us to pray:

Almighty and eternal God, you have given to humanity as a model the Christ your Son, our Savior,

made man and humbling himself even to death on the cross; grant that we may always keep before us the great lesson of his Passion in order to share in the glory of the Resurrection.

(Collect, Palm Sunday)

Theological Clarifications

Let us enter the theme with the Pope’s words in the Encyclical on Faith, where the great paradox immediately appears: suffering is both a scandal and an opportunity. It must be both resisted and valued, alleviated and transfigured:

Speaking of faith often means speaking of painful trials. Yet St. Paul sees in them the most compelling proclamation of the Gospel, because it is in weakness and suffering that the power of God appears - a power that surpasses our weakness and suffering.

The Christian knows that suffering cannot be eliminated,

but it can receive meaning;

it can become an act of love, a surrender into the hands of God who does not abandon us,

and thus a stage of growth in faith and love.

(Lumen Fidei 56)

The theme of suffering is intimately linked to faith, first of all because it is not obvious to recognize that “man in his prosperity does not understand; he is like the beasts that perish” (Ps 49:13,21), and that it is “by His wounds that we have been healed” (1 Pt 2:25). Since suffering is difficult to integrate - especially when it touches the innocent - it has always been the greatest objection to faith in God. When it touches the guilty, we can understand it, but then we often fall into the false image of a punitive, vengeful God.

Hence the usual questions:

“If God exists and is good, why does He allow evil?

Why doesn’t He eliminate the wicked?

Why does He make us suffer?

Why does He let us suffer?

Why does He not intervene?

What did I do to deserve this misfortune?

Why is God punishing me?”

And yet Jesus came precisely to free us from the direct association of “crime and punishment” (“If you are sick, it’s your fault”; “Illness is a punishment for your sins”).

Before the existence of evil and suffering, faith holds with sound reason several key truths:

1. We must distinguish pain, suffering, evil, the Evil One, and the Cross.

• Pain belongs to the finiteness of creation, intensified by the disturbance introduced by sin: “All creation groans and suffers” (Rom 8:22).

• Suffering is a specifically human experience, reflecting what we do or endure contrary to our flourishing.

• Moral evil is what exists but should not exist; it has no good reason. It is permitted only because of our finite freedom.

• The Evil One is not the personification of evil but a created being, perverted and perverting—less powerful than God, but more cunning than humans. One must never dialogue with him.

• The Cross is the way by which Jesus faced and conquered pain, suffering, evil, and death.

2. God does not will evil, does not send evil, and does not respond to evil with evil.

“God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” (1 Jn 1:5)

“I do not rejoice in the death of the wicked.” (Ez 33:11)

“God tempts no one.” (Jas 1:13)

“Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Rom 12:21)

3. It is an illusion to think that life or relationships are “fine” only when nothing is difficult. In trials, the tempter will accuse, obstruct, and try to destroy faith and hope; Jesus, on the other hand, will console, help, and strengthen them.

Suffering must be faced both for developmental reasons and redemptive reasons.

Developmental reasons: the maturation of love

Birth is traumatic, death is traumatic, conversion is traumatic. One suffers to be born; one suffers to be reborn. Desire itself carries pain, for it awaits a fulfillment not in our control. Growth requires letting go of what is familiar—welcoming a new reality that demands effort and courage.

Humanity is greater than itself: mortal yet destined for eternal life, creature yet called to share in the Creator, protective of its own life yet able to find it only by giving it:

“Man finds himself only through a sincere gift of himself” (GS 24).

“Whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” (Mk 8:35)

Redemptive reasons: the healing of love

Our fragility is doubled by sin, which distorts our experience. Evil ultimately stems from pride and selfishness - our frantic search for ourselves. The primordial temptation - “you will be like God” (Gen 3:5) - distorts both God’s face (as jealous) and our own (as self-made). Hence humanity chases “sex, money, power” instead of an “obedient, chaste, poor love.”

Jesus invites us to accept the suffering that frees us from attachments:

“Beware of all greed…” (Lk 12:15)

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father, mother… and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (Lk 14:26)

4. Jesus ended up on the cross for two closely connected and truly compelling reasons: to reveal the true face of God and to redeem the face of humanity. He came to guarantee that “God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all” (1 Jn 1:5)—that God is absolutely trustworthy, with nothing arbitrary or tyrannical in Him, nothing contrary to the good of humanity. And He came to bring to fulfillment the true image of the human person as fashioned by God’s own hands: a life not marked by fear, by the need to control, by self protection at all costs, nor by the resulting numbness to the good of others. We need only listen again to the solemn words of Zechariah’s Canticle: “The rising sun will visit us from on high to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace” (Lk 1:78–79).

And Jesus overcame evil and transfig men and for our salvation.” Threatened with death from the moment of His birth, spending thirty years in obscurity, misunderstood by His relatives, His neighbors, and the religious leaders of His people, Jesus weeps at the tomb of Lazarus and sweats blood at the prospect of His own death: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tested in every way like us, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15).

And even more: “Although he was the Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered; and, made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him” (Heb 4:8–9).

Then comes his masterpiece, the Cross—the summit of the total coherence of his entire earthly life: only works of liberation from evil, no attempt to save himself; freeing others, binding himself! “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, and he went about doing good and healing all those who were under the power of the devil, because God was with him” (Acts 10:38).

And he accomplished all this by suffering for us and more than us, touched in body, soul, and spirit (“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?!” Mt 27:46). And he conquered, because he did not allow sin and death to prevail: even though “He who knew no sin, God made him to be sin for our sake, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor 5:21), he brought love to its fullness, dying with an act of faith, an act of hope, an act of merciful charity.

And by giving us his Spirit precisely through his death (“he handed over the Spirit”—Jn 19:30), he made us capable of facing evil in a way that is neither destructive nor self destructive. This is the meaning of the Cross: not mere suffering, but suffering lived in Jesus and like Jesus.

Thus, for believers, there exists something like “redemptive suffering” (John Paul II): a transfigured suffering, not for one’s own ruin but for the salvation of others; and a death that is no longer the loss of life, but the gift of life.

5. From the Cross we understand why God does not heal every illness: Because what matters is not health but salvation, not physical life but eternal life.

Suffering can then become an opportunity to overcome one’s pride, to acknowledge one’s fragility, to overcome every claim of self sufficiency, and to learn to allow oneself to be loved and cared for; an opportunity to forget oneself a little more and to take care of others, to unfold in works of mercy rather than fold in upon oneself in obsessive self concern; an opportunity to grow in patience, or to offer one’s suffering by uniting it with that of the Lord, who saved us precisely through his prayer and through his sacrifice.

Spiritual Suggestions

One can make lectio divina on Lk 7:18–35, where we see that our faith in Jesus is faith in a God who reveals His face through works of liberation from evil and who, in the face of evil, overcomes evil with good. John the Baptist was beheaded, and Jesus was crucified, yet from them we saw nothing except the giving of their lives, through every possible gesture of liberation from evil:

18 John too was informed by his disciples of all these events. John called two of them 19 and sent them to the Lord to say: “Are you the one who is to come, or must we wait for another?”

20 When the men came to Him, they said: “John the Baptist has sent us to you to ask: Are you the one who is to come, or must we wait for another?”

21 At that very moment Jesus healed many people of diseases, infirmities, and evil spirits, and He gave sight to many who were blind.

22 Then He gave them this answer: “Go and report to John what you have seen and heard: the blind regain their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the good news proclaimed to them.

23 And blessed is anyone who does not take offense at me!”

Educational Guidelines

1. It is a beautiful thing to teach young people to face their own suffering with strength of spirit and to work to relieve the suffering of others. It is a beautiful thing to help young people—today overly pampered, overprotected, and surrounded by every kind of comfort—to give thanks not only for gifts but also for crosses: “In prosperity, man does not understand; he is like the beasts that perish” (Ps 48:13,21).

2. For a Christian education within a society that is excessively performance driven and competitive, it is urgent to deepen the centrality of self gift: gifts and limits must be accepted and placed at the service of others; otherwise one always feels inadequate, always wrong, always under strain.

3. Small but important suggestions:

a) Understanding, not immediate answers. In general, young people (and we ourselves as well) need to feel understood when faced with suffering. If our young people express suffering, it is best to stay close to them and reassure them by saying: “It is normal to feel sad, angry, or confused when things happen that we don’t like. But remember that I am close to you, and I assure you that Jesus understands you, and especially in these moments He feels great tenderness for you.”

b) Present God not as the one who causes evil, but as the one who frees us from evil. It is still common to hear: “It happened because God wanted it. Let us accept God’s will.” This is not a correct expression. God’s will is always good, always our good.

c) Encourage concrete gestures: praying together for someone who is suffering; making an act of help toward a person in pain; lighting a candle and keeping a moment of silence; recounting episodes from the life of Jesus in which He weeps, suffers, consoles; telling stories of people who found strength in faith.

Don Roberto Carelli, SDB