Be Worthy of Your Suffering
Redemptive suffering invites us to leave our cocoon and fully participate in the human experience.
Photo by Žygimantas Dukauskas on Unsplash
When we are born, we are promised nothing but the certainty of pain and discomfort. All of us arrive in this world in pain, as we leave the cozy and safe environment of our mother’s womb and are forced to breathe by ourselves the cold and contaminated air for the first time. Most of us depart from this world in pain, succumbing to disease or clinging to life until the last breath. This is the inescapable, raw reality our society has decided to deny.
We are constantly told to be happy and lured into the latest gadget or fashion that will make us feel incredible, confident, and satisfied. At any given time, in any given place, there is a splendid array of products and slogans to help us feel anything other than pain, sadness, or discouragement.
As if shopping therapy wasn’t bad enough, we are drowning in a sea of prescription drugs targeted at blocking pain and removing every little bit of discomfort from our daily lives, be it a headache, cramp, or back pain. In our modern society, sickness and pain must be kept at bay, and potential suffering must be avoided at all costs, even to the extent of ending one’s life.
Euthanasia, by abortion or other means, seeks to avoid suffering by ending someone’s life. And, in doing so, it puts us in the dangerous position of determining how much suffering we will allow another person to endure before we end their lives. But who decides who is better off dead and who is better off alive? Rather than declaring ourselves the arbiters of human life, we must come to terms with the fact that suffering is an ineradicable part of life. Without it, human life can not be complete. In Nietzsche’s words: to live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.
Existential Vacuum
We numb ourselves through life and confine the anguish of death to hospitals and nursing homes, never allowing pain to do its work in the human soul. The irony is that, despite our pain-avoidance culture, we have been plagued by mental suffering as never before in human history. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), about 280 million people worldwide have depression, including 5% of the world’s adults and 5.7% of adults above age 60. In the United States alone, someone dies of suicide every 12 minutes– over 41,000 people a year. To put this in perspective, homicide claims less than 16,000 lives each year, according to 2013 CDC statistics.
The problem is that our consumerist, anti-religious, and antiseptic society has not only neglected but also intensified the “pain of the soul”. The Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl coined the term “existential vacuum” to explain the crisis of meaning he saw as a widespread phenomenon of the 20th century. To Frankl, the existential vacuum manifests itself in a state of boredom, and the lack of meaning in one’s life is vicariously compensated for by the will to power, the will to money, or the will to pleasure. In the 21st century, more and more people are suffering from this “boredom”, this existential vacuum, and calling on a psychiatrist when they would have seen a pastor, a priest, or a rabbi in the former days.
The Meaning of Suffering
Rather than seeing suffering as the opposite of happiness, we should embrace the reality of a painful and joyful life. When we accept pain as part of being alive, we can see it as an opportunity for growth and transformation, finding meaning amid suffering.
According to Buddhism, the root of all suffering is attachment and desire. The desire for material possessions, fame, power, and pleasure creates a sense of attachment that leads to suffering. The attachment to these things is temporary and can be lost at any moment, leaving us feeling empty, disappointed, and unhappy. To overcome suffering, we must develop a sense of detachment from material possessions and desires. This detachment allows us to be content with what we have and to find happiness in the present moment.
Similar to Buddhism, the Catholic faith believes that suffering can help individuals detach from worldly pleasures and focus more fully on the spiritual life. However, Catholicism takes us a step further with the concept of redemptive suffering - the belief that suffering can have a salvific value. This means that through the experience of pain and suffering, individuals can unite their suffering with that of Christ on the cross and offer it up for the salvation of others.
Suffering is an intrinsic part of life, but it can be transformed by love and offered up for the good of others and mankind. Jesus told His Apostles at the Last Supper that “a man can have no greater love than to lay down his life for his friends” (Jn. 15:13). Even a non-religious person can recognize the act of unselfish sacrifice of a soldier who gives his life for his country — he dies so that others may live in peace. We may not be called to make such a heroic sacrifice in our lives, but we can still conquer our daily sufferings through love. Every pain endured with love, every cross borne with resignation, benefits every man, woman, and child in the Mystical Body of Christ. That is the foundation of redemptive suffering - to suffer for the greater good. Suffering for the sake of suffering is only hurt, but the moment one endures pain with love and a purpose, suffering becomes bearable and joyful. Any woman who carried and labored a baby knows what that means.
To avoid suffering by letting go of one’s desires is an honorable and attainable goal, but the idea that we can create a world free of suffering is utopian. We live in a broken world, and suffering is inseparable from man's earthly existence. The concept of redemptive suffering gives us a tool to overcome pain and is a powerful reminder that we are not alone in our struggles. In this sense, suffering invites us to communion and solidarity by forcing us to leave our cocoon and fully participate in the human experience.