Archbishop of Sydney

Suffering

By + George Pell
ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY
1 July 2001

Like other helpers priests regularly have to confront suffering and evil, and try to help people to cope. This is not easy. Presence and support are important and few words are far better than too many words.

Human suffering is a mystery and the suffering of good people is a greater mystery still.

For those without faith, suffering is a brute fact, without meaning, which many bear stoically and with dignity.

For those people with faith in a personal God, who is good and has endowed life with pattern and purpose, suffering can seem to contradict the Good News.

a sudden and unexpected death, or a massive injustice, can shake and test a faith lived out and supported by many years of prayer and good behaviour.

Often it is difficult to see beyond the cause of our sadness and sometimes even this can be twisted by our personal reactions. A self-centred sorrow places the suffering of others on the periphery. But it is natural in the first shock to see little but our loss.

By any criterion, much suffering is underserved, but death and suffering are somehow deeply related to sinfulness, personal evil acts. Violent crimes are one example.

God always forgives. Humans sometimes forgive but nature never forgives. So some suffering follows from our actions: pollution and damage to the environment; or alcoholism, drug addiction, sexually transmitted diseases.

However Christ's teaching repeatedly ruled out any necessary connection between suffering and personal or family guilt. The instinct of many people when stricken with misfortune to ask why God is punishing them is mistaken. The Old Testament book of Job wrestled with the fact that the innocent often suffer.

No great religion speaks of a unique son of God as Christianity does and there is no exact equivalent to a Divine Being who saves by suffering, although this is a development of the suffering servant model in Isaiah, an Old Testament prophet.

The cross has lost its power to shock us, because the cross was used to kill slaves. No Roman citizen could be crucified. But it is no coincidence that the cross, or a crucifix (with Christ's body) is the most powerful Christian symbol. It helps us when in trouble to know that the Son of God suffered too.

Suffering can poison us, harden our hearts, confirm us in our obsession with self. But Christians believe that suffering can purify, spark unexpected growth humanly and spiritually.

We also believe that the scales of justice balance out in eternity, just as surely as this does not always happen in this life. Those who suffer more than their share will have redress. This is part of what Jesus meant when he said "Blessed are those who mourn, they shall be comforted" (Mt. A 5.)