Our spirit is set in one direction, the only direction for our intellect, will and heart is—towards Christ our Redeemer, towards Christ, the Redeemer of man. We wish to look towards Him—because there is salvation in no one else but Him, the Son of God —repeating what Peter said: “Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.”1

In 1984, the Church celebrated the Holy Year of the Redemption. In this, the sixth year of his pontificate, the Holy Father presented another beautiful Apostolic Letter, Salvifici Doloris. In this encyclical, he reflects on the salvific meaning of human suffering. He sees suffering as a mysterious “call” to man to go beyond himself in a mysterious way.

In the opening lines of his encyclical, the Holy Father quotes from Paul’s letter to the Colossians. The Apostle was under arrest when he received the disturbing news that the Christian community of Colossae was being subjected to erroneous doctrine. He passionately wanted to go to them but was unable to do so. So he promptly wrote a letter instead. In this letter Paul shares his reflections on the redemptive power of human suffering. He has made a priceless discovery which gives him great joy. Looking down at his prison chains he writes:

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of His body, that is the Church.2

Just what is the discovery that Paul has made? And from whence does his joy come? The Passion is complete, infinite in its satisfactory power, for with the Lord there is plenteous redemption. So neither Paul nor anyone else could add to that.

The secret of Paul’s joy is that he now understands the salvific power of his own suffering. He knows that Christ suffered in order to establish the reign of God. He knows, too, that Christ in His incarnate divine Person has in some way united Himself to every man.

Therefore, would not every man be offered the possibility of becoming a “partner” in the Paschal Mystery?3 Would it not follow that the sufferings in his own flesh would serve to help bring “completeness” to Christ’s Passion by “conveying” the salvific power of the Redeemer’s suffering to that little Christian community there at Colossae? In this way he would more fully become Christ’s felllow-worker for the Kingdom.

So Paul rejoices in this discovery and shares it with others so that they, too, will come to understand the salvific meaning of suffering. Accordingly, through their suffering Christians can become “collaborators” in the divine plan of Redemption and thus help to bring “completeness” to the sufferings of Christ.

The Mystery of Suffering 
In the vocabulary of the Old Testament, suffering and evil are identified with each other. It was common belief that suffering came as a punishment for sin. Consequently, suffering appeared to be a “justified evil.”

The book of Job is the story of a just man who, without any fault of his own, is afflicted with many sufferings. Knowing that he is innocent, he challenges the principle that suffering is punishment for one’s sins. His suffering must be accepted as a mystery which cannot be understood by human intelligence.

In Salvifici Doloris the Holy Father states that suffering may be a form of punishment due to sin. Yet, not all suffering has the nature of punishment as a consequence of sin. In the case of Job, his suffering was in the nature of a test permitted by God to demonstrate Job’s righteousness.

However, the Book of Job is not the last word on suffering. Since the story of Job is a foretelling of the passion of Christ, the meaning of suffering cannot be linked to the moral order based on justice alone. Such a notion would impoverish the concept of justice found in Scripture.

In the history of the Israelite people we find that sufferings inflicted by God on the Chosen People included an invitation to His mercy. God corrects in order to lead to conversion. So, the purpose of those punishments was not to destroy but to discipline His people. The Holy Father writes:

Suffering must serve for conversion that is, for the rebuilding of goodness in the subject, who can recognize the divine mercy in this call of repentance. The purpose of penance is to overcome evil, which under different forms lies dormant in man. Its purpose is also to strengthen goodness both in man himself and in his relationships with others and especially with God.4

But the Holy Father’s insights on the subject of suffering are yet more profound. He claims that in order to perceive the true answer to the “why” of suffering, we must look to the revelation of divine love. And why does he say this? Simply because love is the ultimate sources of the meaning of everything that exists. While suffering will always remain a mystery, love is the permanent answer to its meaning. And this answer has been given by God Himself in the Cross of Jesus Christ.

Suffering Conquered by Love
In reflecting on Christ’s conversation with Nicodemus, the Holy Father notes that the Savior Himself introduces us into the very heart of God’s salvific work:

For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.5

In these few words Christ reveals to us the essence of salvation. Salvation simply means liberation from evil. And evil is always closely bound up with suffering. In other words, salvation means liberation from suffering. But here, Christ is not referring to temporal suffering; rather, He is speaking of definitive suffering, the evil that originated with original sin. The Holy Father expressed definitive suffering in these words: “the loss of eternal life, being rejected by God, damnation.”6

However, we need not “perish” for the love which prompts the Father to send His only-begotten Son is at the heart of our being rescued from perishing. He substituted His own beloved Son to suffer in our stead. This is salvific love.

The mission of the Son, then, was to conquer definitive suffering. This means that He had to strike at the roots of evil which are grounded in sin and death, for it is sin and death that cause the loss of eternal life. He conquers sin by His obedience even unto death. And He conquers death by rising again. Christ did not remain dead.

In summary, the Father gave and delivered His infinitely beloved Son to death out of love for us. And the Son carried out in full the Father’s Will out of love for Him—and for us. Again, the motive and sources of our salvation is love. And how does all of this affect us directly? It is now possible for us to live out our daily lives with the hope of eternal life and holiness. The Holy Father explains the Son’s saving work in these words:

First of all He blots out from human history the dominion of sin which took root under the influence of the evil spirit beginning with original sin, and then He gives man the possibility of living in sanctifying grace. He also takes away the dominion of death, by His resurrection beginning the process of the future resurrection of “eternal life,” that is, of man’s definitive happiness in union with God; this means for the saved, that in the eschatological perspective, suffering is totally blotted out.7

The Light of the Gospel
Even though Christ’s victory over the roots of evil does not abolish temporal suffering, it does throw new light on all suffering. This is the light of the Gospel! And it is this “light” that radically changes the picture of our earthly existence.

In His messianic activity, Christ drew close in a salvific way to the whole world of suffering. He was sensitive to every form of human suffering, whether of the body or of the soul. At the same time He taught. And at the heart of all His teaching we find the eight beatitudes. These are instructions addressed to people who are tried by various sufferings in their temporal life.

Furthermore, Christ Himself experienced temporal suffering. During His public ministry, He experienced not only fatigue, homelessness and misunderstanding on the part of those closest to Him, but what is more, He became increasingly isolated and surrounded by hostility. He sensed the agitation for His death and knew of the plans being made. Yet, He went toward His passion and death duly cognizant of the mission He had to fulfill in this precise way. It is by means of this suffering that He brought about “that man should not perish but have eternal life.” The Holy Father writes:

Precisely by means of his cross He must strike at the roots of evil, planted in the history of man and in human souls. Precisely by means of His cross He must accomplish the work of salvation. This work in the plan of eternal love, has a redemptive character.8

So Christ goes towards His own suffering conscious of its power to uproot the evil of sin and death. He goes forward in obedience to the Father in the love with which He has loved the world and every person in the world.

The Fulfillment of the Scriptures
The messianic texts in the Old Testament which foreshadowed the sufferings of the future Anointed One had to be fulfilled. The Fourth Song of the Suffering Servant in the Book of Isaiah is especially impressive. The Pope notes that in this passage the prophet gives a description of the passion of Christ, which is almost more expressive and touching than those of the evangelists themselves:

He had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely, he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgression, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.9

The prophet wants us to understand the extent of the evil and suffering with which Christ burdened Himself. He tells us that all human sin in its breadth and depth becomes the true cause of the Redeemer’s suffering for “the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” This is “substitutive” suffering, but above all it is redemptive. The Holy Father writes:

In His suffering, sins are cancelled out precisely because He alone as the only-begotten Son could take them upon Himself, accept them with that love for the Father which overcomes the evil of every sin; in a certain sense He annihilates this evil in the spiritual space of the relationship between God and humanity, and fills this space with good.10

The Holy Father further explains that the Son who is consubstantial with the Father suffers as a man. His suffering, then, has human dimensions. But at the same time it also has a depth and intensity which transcends the human because the man who suffers is in person the only-begotten Son Himself: “God from God.” Because He is God, He alone is capable of embracing the full measure of evil contained in the sin of each person and in the “total” sin which spans human history.

Gethsemane and Golgotha
It is Christ Himself, then, who gives the best possible answer to the meaning of suffering not only by His teaching, but most of all by His own suffering. In Gethsemane He seemed to have been given a graphic and detailed in-depth “preview” of the sufferings foretold by the prophet.

Human nature recoils at the very thought of suffering and death. In Christ’s prayer in the Garden the fear of His own horrendous death was manifested. His natural impulse was to escape but He stifled this urge by accepting His Father’s will. “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, nevertheless, not as I will but as you will.”11 A little later He reassures the Father: “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”12 His prayers prove the truth of His love through the acceptance of the suffering that will be His.

After the words in Gethsemane came the words on Golgotha. These, too, bear witness to the depth of the evil of the suffering that Christ underwent, a suffering that is unique in the history of the world. His words, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” seem to indicate a breakdown in that inseparable union of the Son with the Father. However, the Father Himself is responsible for this because He “laid on him the iniquity of us all.”13 But it is love which prompted the Father to give up His Son, and this love is the heart of our being rescued from the evil of definitive suffering.

On the Cross Christ experienced in a human way the suffering which is the separation, the rejection by the Father which means estrangement from God. But it is precisely through this suffering that He accomplishes the Redemption and can say as He breathes His last breath, “It is finished.”14

Needless to say, human suffering reached its culmination in the passion of Christ. At the same time it took on a completely new dimension because it has been linked to love. This is the love that Christ spoke of to Nicodemus, that love which draws good out of suffering, “just as the supreme good of the Redemption of the world draws from the cross of Christ, and from that cross constantly takes its beginning.”15

Love conquers suffering and becomes salvific when there is total unconditional surrender to God’s will. This means the complete giving of oneself to Another as exemplified in Christ’s own sacrificial love in His unconditional obedience.

Sharers in the Suffering of Christ
Though entirely innocent, Christ took upon Himself the total evil of sin. In doing so, the Eternal Son of God subjected Himself to the incomprehensible and incomparable magnitude and intensity of human suffering. He suffered not only for every human being but also in each one’s stead. Thus accomplishing redemption through suffering, human suffering was given a new dimension; it now has redemptive power.16

In this section, the Holy Father draws heavily from the Pauline Letters. St. Paul was a person totally dedicated to Christ. He relentlessly preached Christ as the one universal Savior regardless of personal cost. He was keenly aware that Christ in His redemptive suffering became a sharer in all-human suffering. And in discovering the redemptive power in Christ’s suffering, Paul discovered, through faith, the purpose of his own suffering in Christ’s. Thus, his own suffering was enriched with new content and meaning. This discovery moved him to “come on strong” in his letter to the Galatians:

I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me: and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.17

Paul’s actions, then, seem somehow to become the actions of Christ. This “status” has been made from him through his crucifixion with Christ. Paul has come to know the love which led Christ to the Cross. He believed that if Christ loved us to the extend that He suffered and died for us, then He lives in those who respond to His love by willingly sharing in His redemptive suffering.

The Holy Father goes on to explain that the eloquence of the cross and death is completed by the eloquence of the resurrection. Therefore, belief in the resurrection throws a completely new light, in a most penetrating way, on one’s whole life and particularly on one’s suffering. This means that the cross links us with the resurrection. Such faith helps us to go forward through the darkness of humiliations, doubts, hopelessness and even persecution. In instructing the Philippians, Paul wrote:

That I may know Him (Christ) and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in death, that if possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.18

The witnesses of Christ’s passion were also witnesses of His resurrection. They saw the Risen Lord in His glorified humanity, and they came to realize that it was Christ’s suffering and death that paid the price of our Redemption. They also became convinced that it is through many tribulations that we must do our part in order to enter the kingdom of God.19 It is through our own sufferings that we can join Christ and help to pay the price of our redemption. Thus, the kingdom of God has become the future goal of our earthly existence. And it is through suffering that we mature and ready ourselves for this kingdom.
As we ponder the meaning of this reality, we begin to see that we suffer with Christ in order to be glorified with Him. Actually, our sufferings are slight and momentary compared to the glory which is unimaginable and unending. Paul speaks of this in his letter to the Corinthians:

For this slight momentary affliction in preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen, but to things that are unseen.20

Paul who shared so abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, also experienced the mercy and comfort of God in his tribulations. He offered encouragement to the Corinthians in these words: “for as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort, too.”21

The Gospel Paradox of Weakness and Strength
To the human eyes the Cross was Christ’s ruin. But it was in weakness that He manifested His power and in humiliation that He demonstrated all His messianic greatness. And it was in this way that He fully accomplished the mission entrusted to Him by His Father.

Paul himself experienced the paradox of weakness and strength. In the second letter to the Corinthians he wrote: “I will all the more gladly boast of my weakness, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”22 And to the Philippians he wrote: “I can do all things in Him who strengthens me.”23

Suffering is also an invitation to us. It is a call to self-emptying in order to mature spiritually through the power of Christ. The saints and martyrs down through the centuries have exemplified in various ways the paradox of weakness and strength.

Suffering whether from our own sins or from some other source is always a trial which at times can be very difficult. Yet, all the weaknesses of human nature have the potential to be infused with the power that comes from the Cross of Christ.

In summary, since Christ suffered for us and in place of us, we are called to share in that suffering which accomplished our Redemption. We do this when we turn to God and abandon ourselves to Him with full confidence in His love for us. In faith, we know that He will give us the strength to endure and will bring unforeseen good out of our suffering. In this way, each one of us can take part in Christ’s on-going redemptive work which He inaugurated when He obediently and lovingly carried out His Father’s plan for the redemption of the world.

Accordingly, redemption, though completely achieved by Christ’s own suffering, abides in a very real way in our suffering. As history unfolds, this redemptive work lives and develops in the Body of Christ, the Church. It is in this sense that every human suffering in loving union with Christ completes the suffering of Christ.

The Gospel of Suffering
The Redeemer Himself wrote the Gospel of Suffering through His example. He accepted His suffering in love so that we “should not perish but have eternal life.” Christ’s example, then, along with the Living Word of His teaching, has become a real source of inspiration and redemptive power for all Christians in their suffering.

Mary, after her Son, holds the first and most exalted place in the Gospel of Suffering. Her many and intense trials and tribulations are not only a proof of her unshakable faith, but they serve to contribute to the redemption of all of us. However, it was on Calvary in particular that Mary’s suffering reached an intensity which was mysteriously and supernaturally fruitful for the redemption of the whole world.

In this section the Holy Father stresses the fact that Christ did not conceal from His listeners the need for suffering. There was no ambiguity in His teachings. He very clearly stated that “If any man would come after me...let him take up his cross daily.”24 His demands for a moral life and spiritual growth are high. He definitely requires not the gratification of self but the denial of self. In short, Christ taught that entrance into the kingdom of heaven requires self-discipline and renunciation. He contrasted the “hard and narrow” way that leads to heaven to the “wide and easy” way that leads to destruction.

Nor did Christ minimize the dangers of discipleship. In fact, He was very frank about the challenge it entailed. Occasionally He spoke of the persecutions His followers would later encounter. For instance, He told them that “they will lay hands on you and persecute you . . . and some of you they will put to death; you will be hated by all for my name’s sake.” He then added: “But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your lives.”25

Christ further explained that their sufferings would be the sign of their likeness to Himself and union with Him. He put it this way: “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you . . . . If they persecuted me, they will persecute you.” He then proceeds to reassure them: “I have said this to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”26

Actually, Christ has overcome the world permanently by His resurrection. Yet, suffering was present in a distinct way in that victory for He retains in His body the marks of the wounds. It is through the resurrection that He manifests the victorious power of suffering.

The Gospel of Suffering written by Christ contains a special call to courage and fortitude. All those who suffer together with Christ by uniting their human suffering to His salvific suffering help to write and proclaim this Gospel. The Holy Father explains that a special grace is concealed in this suffering. It is present in a particular power that draws a person interiorly close to Christ. St. Francis of Assisi, St. Ignatius of Loyola and many other saints experienced this spiritual reality. In such people an interior maturity and spiritual greatness become evident to others. This maturity and greatness are the result of a particular conversion and cooperation with the graces of the crucified Redeemer.

Accordingly, it is Christ Himself who is present and active at the heart of human suffering through His Spirit of Truth, the consoling Spirit. It is He who transforms the very substance of the spiritual life, giving the person who suffers a place close to Himself. The Holy Father states:

It is He—as the interior Master and Guide—who reveals to the suffering brother and sister this wonderful interchange, situated at the very heart of the mystery of the Redemption. Suffering is, in itself, an experience of evil. But Christ has made suffering the firmest basis of the definitive good, namely, the good of eternal salvation. By His suffering on the Cross, Christ reached the very roots of evil, of sin and death. He conquered the author of evil, Satan, and his permanent rebellion against the Creator.27

Thus, gradually and truly, Christ leads the suffering person into the Kingdom of His Father through the very heart of His own suffering. Yet, the divine Redeemer goes even further. He wants to penetrate the soul of every sufferer through the heart of His holy Mother who is the first and most exalted of all the redeemed. The dying Christ did this when He conferred upon the ever Virgin Mary a new kind of motherhood —spiritual and universal—towards all human beings. Every individual, then, can remain together with her closely united to Him on the cross. Thus, every form of suffering, given fresh life by the power of this cross, remains no longer the weakness of man; rather, it becomes the medium through which the power of God works.

In general, people enter suffering with a typically human protest and find themselves asking God, “Why?” They seek an answer to this question on the human level. And yet, as they reflect honestly on their condition, they cannot help but notice that the One to whom they are putting the question has Himself suffered. His answer is given from the cross, from the heart of His own suffering. It takes time, sometimes a long time, for this answer to be perceived interiorly. The sufferer hears Christ’s saving answer as he himself gradually becomes a sharer in the sufferings of Christ.

The answer which comes with an interior encounter with the Master is more than a mere abstract answer; it is an insistent call. Here the Holy Father “quotes” the invitation Christ extends to all sufferers: “Follow me! Come! Take part through your suffering in this work of saving the world, a salvation achieved through my suffering! Through my Cross!”28

As the suffering person takes up his cross and unites himself spiritually to the cross of Christ, the salvific meaning of suffering is gradually revealed to him. As the significance of suffering becomes more and more clear, the individual finds in his suffering not only deep interior peace but he also experiences spiritual joy. St. Paul was speaking of this joy when he wrote: “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake.”29

It is, then, the discovery of the salvific meaning of suffering in union with Christ that transforms a negative and depressing feeling into one of hope and joy. Suffering, then, more than anything else clears the way for the grace which transforms human souls. In a word, it is suffering which makes present in the history of humanity the powers of Redemption.

The Good Samaritan
In concluding his Apostolic Letter The Christian Meaning of Human Suffering, the Holy Father ponders the parable of The Good Samaritan. He illustrates how this parable belongs to the Gospel of Suffering and how we are to relate to our suffering neighbor.

The name “Good Samaritan” fits every person who is moved by the misfortune of another. The Pope advises that we must not be indifferent and “pass by” our suffering neighbor but that we are “to stop” beside him. Our motive in stopping should not be curiosity, but rather a sign of availability. It means going beyond sympathy and compassion and putting one’s whole heart into bringing relief to the suffering person as the Good Samaritan did in the parable.

The world of human suffering unceasingly calls for another world, the world of human love. Today there are many and various types of “Good Samaritan” works which exist in the Church and in society. They serve to combat the various forms of hatred, violence, cruelty, contempt for others and general insensitivity to the needs of others. The Pope speaks of the responsibility of the Church to inspire members to feel called personally to witness love for those who suffer not only physically but also spiritually.

Christ Himself is our example. He went about “doing good” and the good He did was to relieve people of their suffering. His words about the Final Judgment help us to understand the gravity of the lesson He teaches us in the parable:

Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was in prison and you came to me;30 To the just who ask when they did all of this, He will say: Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.31 Those who refused to help will hear these words: As you did it not to one of the lest of these, you did it not to me.32

Christ’s words show how essential it is to “stop” as the Good Samaritan did to give some help. They help us also to discover that all human suffering is rooted in the redemptive suffering of Christ. When He said, “You did it to me,” He meant that He Himself is present in this suffering person and that He Himself experiences love and receives help.

In conclusion, the Holy Father sees suffering as a mysterious “call” to man to go beyond himself in a mysterious way. He points out that Christ Himself has revealed the two-fold answer to the “why” of suffering. 1) All those who suffer are called to become “sharers in Christ’s sufferings” in order to help “complete” the redemption of the world. 2) Suffering is present in the world to bring forth works of love for one’s neighbor so that the whole of civilization might be transformed into a “civilization of love.” In a word, suffering is redemptive. It is rooted in shared divine love and will be completed in shared human love. Evil will be overcome and Redemption will be fully accomplished through suffering.