The Christian must not only accept suffering: he must make it holy. Nothing so easily becomes unholy as suffering.

Merely accepted, suffering does nothing for our souls except, perhaps, to harden them. Endurance alone is no consecration. True asceticism is not a mere cult of fortitude. We can deny ourselves rigorously for the wrong reason and end up by pleasing ourselves mightily with our self-denial.

Suffering is consecrated to God by faith - not by faith in suffering, but by faith in God. Some of us believe in the power and the value of suffering. But such a belief is an illusion. Suffering has no power and no value of its own.

It is valuable only as a test of faith. What if our faith fails the test? Is it good to suffer, then? What if we enter into suffering with a strong faith in suffering, and then discover that suffering destroys us?

To believe in suffering is pride: but to suffer, believing in God, is humility. For pride may tell us that we are strong enough to suffer, that suffering is good for us because we are good. Humility tells us that suffering is an evil which we must always expect to find in our lives because of the evil that is in ourselves. But faith also knows that the mercy of God is given to those who seek him in suffering, and that by his grace we can overcome evil with good. Suffering, then, becomes good by accident, by the good that it enables us to receive more abundantly from the mercy of God. It does not make us good by itself, but it enables us to make ourselves better than we are. Thus, what we consecrate to God in suffering is not our suffering but our selves.

Only the sufferings of Christ are valuable in the sight of God, who hates evil, and to him they are valuable chiefly as a sign. The death of Jesus on the cross has an infinite meaning and value not because it is a death, but because it is the death of the Son of God. The cross of Christ says nothing of the power of suffering or of death. It speaks only of the power of him who overcame both suffering and death by rising from the grave.

The wounds that evil stamped upon the flesh of Christ are to be worshiped as holy not because they are wounds, but because they are his wounds. Nor would we worship them if he had merely died of them, without rising again. For Jesus is not merely someone who once loved us enough to die for us. His love for us is the infinite love of God, which is stronger than all evil and cannot be touched by death.

Suffering, therefore, can only be consecrated to God by one who believes that Jesus is not dead. And it is of the very essence of Christianity to face suffering and death not because they are good, not because they have meaning, but because the resurrection of Jesus has robbed them of their meaning.

 

A Meditation for Holy Week from Bread and Wine.

Thomas Merton, “To Know the Cross,” from No Man Is an Island, by Thomas Merton copyright © 1955 by The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani and renewed 1983 by the Trustees of the Merton Legacy Trust, reprinted by permission of Harcourt, Inc.

 

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Your Turn. Tell us what you thought about this article:

Responses

Paul tells us to share in the sufferings of Christ.  It means, as far as my heart has become aware, that we are called to do the things that are loving as Christ calls us to love - to be with the poor until they and I struggle for the same things together in mutual compassion; to  serve the sick - learning how to die to self in love; Learning to do the mundane, the unsavory, in service to brother and sister as Christ calls me to - until I see less the mundane in servanthood, less the discomfort and the self-centred life I have come to enjoy in the comfort of possessions, personal choices in how I use time and all the rest.  I seek to experience joy in being the "least of these my brethern" which calls forth my real status in life before God. To even write these things is hard, for it shows me I have not totally laid down differentiating myself from those I am called to serve and with the total abandon with which Christ has first served me.

Carolee
Columbus, OH.

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This was just what I needed to read today! When I go through a broken-heart (like now), I realize that this suffering reminds me that theres a God.
Brie Bourn

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That is the sickest piece I think I have ever read.... This person needs to receive the Jesus who came to reverse the curse of suffering brought into this world by Satan. Christ became a curse for us so we dont have to suffer.
Joe from Oregon

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Yes Thomas Merton is right that only Love can give meaning to all sufferings. If there is no love there is only suffering for the sake of suffering. Modern man is afraid to suffer because there is little of love in him for God and others. If there could be more love in us there would be meaningful suffering which is redemptive and saving. Love saves through suffering.

John Karondukadavil from Poland

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Am grateful to God and everyone God has used to write and comment on this great isue. I leant aswell God has not called us to suffer for suffering sake but there are some hard moments and difficult we have to choose to go through for God sake.

Mercy Richard