A Reflection on Suffering, Stewardship, and Hope

Mark S. Roberti, Director of Stewardship

Heartland Parishes of Ellis County

Since most Register readers probably have not read Pope Benedict’s latest encyclical letter on Christian hope, I would like to take this opportunity to quote, paraphrase, and reflect upon some of the comments he makes on suffering.  They help us answer the age old question as to why a good God could allow suffering. They help us better understand the role of stewardship in our hope as Christians.

Pope Benedict states, “Suffering stems partly from our finitude, and partly from the mass of sin that has accumulated over the course of history, and continues to grow unabated today.” He seems to be saying that mankind causes its own suffering; and because we are finite beings subject to death, we really must suffer.  He also goes on to say, “Certainly, we must do whatever we can to reduce suffering: to avoid as far as possible the suffering of the innocent; to soothe pain….These are obligations, in both justice and love, and they are included among the fundamental requirements of the Christian life.” Yet, we cannot banish it altogether because we are finite beings.  Because we are finite – because we will have an end in this life – we are overwhelmed by evil.  It is bigger than we are.   

Our hope is ultimately in God. He, alone, has the power “to take away the sin of the world.”  It is this unfulfilled hope that gives us the strength and the courage to carry on, even in seemingly hopeless situations.  When we direct our whole life toward avoiding suffering, in anesthetizing it (so to speak), we lose our focus.  In pursuing – to an excess – nice things, comforts, and conveniences, are we not trying to do just that?  “It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater.” 

I think the Holy Spirit is speaking directly through Pope Benedict when he says, “It is not by sidestepping or fleeing from suffering that we are healed, but rather by our capacity for accepting it, maturing through it and finding meaning through union with Christ who suffered with infinite love.”  After giving an example of a Vietnamese martyr, he says, “The true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer.”  I hear him saying, in a sense, that the meaning and value of love can be found in a willingness to suffer.

Suffering transforms us.  It often purifies us of our vain desires by bringing us closer to Christ.  It is a purgatory of sorts. That’s how some people, for example the Vietnamese martyr whom he praises in the encyclical, can find joy in suffering.

Pope Benedict writes, “A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through ‘compassion’ is a cruel and inhumane society.  Yet society cannot accept its suffering members and support them in their trials unless individuals are capable of doing so themselves; moreover, the individual cannot accept another’s suffering unless he personally is able to find meaning in suffering, a path of purification and growth in maturity, a journey of hope.”  

So, then, suffering makes us more compassionate ourselves, more human.  Put in the singular form, the other person’s suffering becomes mine and I become more human, and through this process I share more in the divinity of Christ.  It is at this intersection that the Cross makes perfect sense. 

The last time Pope John Paul II came to America he warned us that she was in danger of losing her soul.  Pope Benedict XVI says, “To suffer with the other and for the other for the sake of truth and justice; to suffer out of love in order to become a person who truly loves—these are the fundamental elements of humanity, and to abandon them would destroy man himself.”

Let’s be honest with ourselves.  In America, the “I” has overcome the “we”.  In our pursuit of conveniences and things, we’ve lost sight of that which is most important.   The soul which we are in danger of losing is the family.  “[T]he mass of sin that has accumulated over the course of history, and continues to grow unabated today” – of which Benedict speaks – is our disregard for truth and justice.  Though we don’t intend it, and we don’t really even realize it, we’re destroying our own families and the family of man. 

The truth matters.  Love matters.  We matter so much to God that Jesus took flesh to suffer with us in order to free us from our sin.  Stewardship is about putting God first.  It is about putting our families first.  It is about putting others first.  It is about cutting into that mass of sin that has accumulated over the course of time by doing what is right and just in the sight of God, not what is easy and convenient.

The overflowing grace of our hope is from God.  We are called to be stewards of that grace.