Jesus mocked on the cross - #crucifixion #crucified #jesus #cross #crucificado #crucifixión
Channel: Crucifixion Learning
Date: 2023-04-13

Catholics view suffering in a way unlike many other Christians. Most non-Catholic Christians don’t see the need for or value in suffering. I’d like to reflect a little on the role of suffering in the Christian life and its value when united with the cross of Jesus.

Sometimes crosses can come unexpectedly and not in the way we would like. Illness, unemployment, loneliness, underemployment, loved ones who lose their faith — these are all part of the human experience. This Lent, our world has been enveloped in a severe kind of suffering we didn’t expect or choose through the devastating effects of the Coronavirus.  Through these sufferings, though, we believe that God can do a tremendous work in our lives, if only we let Him.

Sin, suffering, and death are almost as old as the human story. From nearly the beginning of time, man has stood in need of redemption. The fall of Adam and Eve dealt a grievous blow to our human nature and wounded it — but didn’t destroy or completely disfigure it. On account of this original disobedience, sin and death became a part of our world, and we were unable to enter heaven. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us that because of the fall, “Adam and Eve transmitted to their descendants human nature wounded by their own first sin and hence deprived of original holiness and justice.”1 Even though sin and death entered the world through original sin, God, in His grace and mercy, promised a Redeemer. Ultimately, the beauty of the Christian story is that Jesus on the cross would fulfill that promise and reconcile man with God.

Through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, man is brought back into friendship with His Creator and is redeemed. By having a spotless human nature and dying upon the cross, Jesus took humanity’s fallen nature and raised it up to something even greater.2 It doesn’t, however, end there. Lent and particularly Holy Week are appropriate times to reflect on how we are called to willingly embrace our own crosses as Jesus embraced His.

How do we even understand suffering though? Jesus’ death on the cross gives meaning to suffering. Jesus helps Christians understand suffering because He “did not come to suppress suffering all at once, nor to explain it, nor to justify it. He came to assume it and to transform it.”3 We can only understand the meaning of suffering by recognizing the supreme love of God, who, for us, “gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”4 For Pope St. John Paul II, this Scripture passage introduces Christians “into the very heart of God’s salvific work … Salvation means liberation from evil, and for this reason it is closely bound up with the problem of suffering … God gives his Son to the world to free man from evil, which bears within itself the definitive and absolute perspective on suffering.”5 By Jesus’ death upon the cross, He transformed suffering from something previously associated with evil into the means for man’s salvation.

Why is suffering still necessary though? Didn’t Jesus die on the cross to take away pain and suffering? Well, not exactly. We still live in a fallen world (thank you, Adam and Eve!) and still experience the effects thereof — which include sin and suffering. But, Jesus allows us to assist in a mysterious way in the redemption that He procured by His cross. St. Paul reminds us that suffering isn’t optional: “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.”6 Also, as John Paul II explains, “In the Cross of Christ not only is the Redemption accomplished through suffering, but also human suffering itself has been redeemed.”7 Therefore, every Christian “is also called to share in that suffering through which the Redemption was accomplished … In bringing about our Redemption through suffering, Christ has also elevated human suffering. That means that each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ.”8 Because of the one sacrifice of Calvary, we who are united to Jesus in Baptism can unite our sufferings with His sacrifice on the cross to be an acceptable offering to the Father.