Catholics and suffering

The Catholic Thing:

When a Catholic goes into a Protestant church, he will often notice a cross or crosses, but usually without a corpus. Catholic churches almost always have a crucifix; Orthodox churches also, but sometimes two-dimensional rather than three-dimensional. Some Catholic churches are noted for very graphic depictions of the wounds and suffering features of Christ crucified. This may give us an indication of the uniquely Catholic perspective on suffering.

Reading the lives of many Catholic saints, one finds them not only accepting suffering, or resigned to suffering, but desirous of it, seeking it proactively, asking for more. For example, the three little children to whom Our Lady appeared at Fatima, began to seek suffering, after Mary revealed to them that “many souls go to hell because there is no one to sacrifice themselves and pray for them.”

Little Jacinta (now St. Jacinta) outdid the other children in seeking voluntary sacrifices and suffering, until Our Lady appeared to her and told her to moderate some of her practices. St. Ignatius advised his followers, “Do you want to become a great saint? Ask God to send you many sufferings.”

A psychiatrist would see masochism in such desire for suffering. But masochism is a love of suffering for its own sake, while the sufferings sought by the saints are motivated by love, by a desire to join with Christ in the redemptive suffering that brings the graces of conversion to sinners, and perseverance to the weak.

St. Paul viewed not only his preaching but his suffering as his essential contribution to building up the Mystical Body of Christ: “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church” (Col. 1:24).

We are steeped in the mystery of the Mystical Body of Christ, where every member is connected in spirit with every other, and one Christian can take it upon himself to pay the penalty for a quagmire of sin that another unwary Christian or “anonymous Christian” has gotten himself into. As Jesus brought about atonement and salvation, so also individual Christians by suffering can atone for the sins of others. Some visionaries among the saints were even given the gift of seeing the fruits of their voluntary sufferings – sinners being converted, souls in purgatory being released.

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