In last week's column, I shared with you Fr. Forristal treatment of God's Providence and Evil. This week, I share with you Fr. Forristal ideas on suffering.
We can now see an answer to the third question, why a loving God allows so much suffering in the world. The answer is that God did not intend man to suffer. It is man himself by his own free choice who brought sin and suffering into the world and still brings them. The only way God could prevent all suffering would be by depriving man of his freedom, and God cannot do this: for man without freedom is no longer man.
Yet this answer does not satisfy us completely. Famine, flood, earthquake, fire, disease and many other natural forces bring untold misery to millions. Do all these things spring from man's rebellion? And even if they do, surely God could lessen their harmful effects and lighten the burden of human suffering? If we cannot blame him for failing to prevent it? Is it his will that we should have to endure these things?
This is the center of the problem of suffering and no one has ever solved it completely. All we can say is that God must sometimes allow us to suffer because he sees it is for our own good, though we may not be able to see this ourselves. This does not mean that we should regard all suffering as God's will and cease to fight against it. Jesus himself relieved sickness wherever he found it. He made the blind see, the deaf hear and the lame walk, and he told his followers to do the same. We must use every means, spiritual and material, to help those who are suffering. We must pray with all our strength for healing for others; and we should not think it selfish to pray for healing for ourselves too.
Still, in spite of all our efforts, there are times when suffering does not go away. It may be that God sees that this suffering is needed in order that a person may reach full spiritual growth. If we have the right attitude to our suffering, it can break through the hardness of our pride and selfishness and open our heart to God and to others. In his poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol, Oscar Wilde described the sufferings of his fellow-prisoners and saw this meaning in them:
Ah! Happy they whose hearts can breakWhen we think about it, we will see that many of our best qualities cannot grow without suffering. If there were no sickness or persecution or other trials, we could not show patience or courage or endurance. If we had no power to injure one another, we could not show honesty or justice or mercy or forgiveness. If we never had to sacrifice our own good for the good of others, there could be no such thing as generosity or unselfishness.
And peace of pardon win!
How else may man make straight his plane
And cleanse his soul from sin?
How else but through a broken heart
May Lord Christ enter in?
Without suffering, it is hard to see how we could ever give proof of our love. Love which never had to endure suffering or make sacrifices for the person loved would be hard to recognize as love at all. God himself shows his love for us most convincingly and most touchingly in the suffering and death of Jesus. "A man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends," said Jesus (John 15:13). He pared himself nothing in showing us that love.
The Gospel does not give us an explanation of suffering but it teaches us how to deal with it. Jesus did not want others to suffer and he did not want to suffer himself. The night before his passion and death, he prayed that God would spare him. But if God saw that his suffering was necessary, then let God's will be done. "Abba, Father!" he prayed, "Everything is possible for you. Take this cup away from me. But let it be as you, not I, would have it" (Mark 14:36).
It will help us to face suffering if we remember that this earthly life is only a very small part of our total existence. "I think that what we suffer in this life," say St. Paul, "can never be compared to the glory, as yet unrevealed, which is waiting for us" (Rom 8:18). The English theologian, John Hick, has pointed out the difference that this must make to our attitude towards suffering.
If the infant toddler who is accidentally drowned really does live in another world, her little unformed personality not after all extinguished but continuing to develop, and ultimately attaining to her perfection and fulfillment, does not this make a very considerable difference? And if the lingering terminal pains of the cancer sufferer do not end in her extinction but in her release into another life, freed from the pain-racked diseased body, does not this again make a very considerable difference? And if the brilliant young pianist, afflicted with Huntington's Chorea, is not to be annihilated by his untimely death, after his distressing physical disintegration, but will continue to explore, enjoy and create beauty in a renewed existence, does not this too make a considerable difference?It was through his suffering and death that Jesus Christ our Lord entered into his life of glory. Like him we may shrink from the suffering that sometimes comes our way. Like him, we must acknowledge that God's way is best and that his will and not ours must be done.
Summary
When we speak of the providence of God, we mean his loving care in directing the course of events for the good of his people. He know our needs and grants our prayers, as long as what we ask for is for our own good and the good of others.
The evil in the world is not caused by God but by man, as the story of Adam and Eve tells us. Whether we regard Adam and Eve as historical figures or allegorical symbols, we find in this story a clear statement that sin and all the evils springing from it were caused by man abusing the freedom God had given him.
The problem of suffering is one we cannot fully explain. Jesus did not give us an explanation but he gave us an example of how to deal with it. He relieved suffering in others and he prayed to have his own cup of suffering taken away. But he accepted it when he saw that it was God's will and in this way he proved his love for us.