Hope and Love – Finding Meaning in Suffering

Is there any meaning in suffering? Or is it all pointless and an occasion for nothing but anguish and despair?

One of the readings for Good Friday is from Isaiah ch. 52-53 about the "Suffering Servant," and there is this line "the Lord was pleased to crush him in infirmity." The Suffering Servant is one of the Old Testament messianic passages that foreshadow Jesus Christ, who by and through love took suffering upon Himself and, as we find on Easter Sunday, by that love transformed death to life.

On Good Friday a few years ago, the day of the Passion of Jesus, I spent much of the day at the hospital watching R as she slept, and I could not help but think -- Can anyone seriously deny that she has shared in the Passion of Jesus? More than merely "carrying a cross" of everyday hardship, she had been a suffering servant, crushed in infirmity.

She had, over the years, multiple broken bones merely from something as common as walking or getting up; knee replacements, hip replacements; kidney failure, poisoned by painkillers, necessitating a kidney transplant; a perforated bowel during a routine procedure; nausea and pain, pneumonia; an vicious attack of MSRA which ravaged her lungs; congestive heart failure; and on and on.  Too many hospitalizations to count; an entire drug store of medications to take every day.

All this suffering, anxiety and agony in the garden – although innocent of wrongdoing and undeserving of such suffering, being dragged before the (medical) authorities for examination, the scourging of her body, being made to carry a cross, stumbling and falling because of the heavy weight, now having her hands pierced with needles as if nails, her body fixed in the bed as if a cross, hanging there suffering and laboring to breathe, and then having her side pierced. Meanwhile, we who love her could do little but watch as she proceeded down her Via Dolorosa, and stand there at the foot of her cross.

This is not to suggest that R is Jesus, but it is abundantly clear that, in all these things, R shared in the Passion of Jesus. God had not abandoned her, even though, like Jesus, she had asked if He had, because she was where He is. And it was in her sharing in His passion, in His suffering, that she also shares in the love of His Redemption.

Perhaps there can be meaning in such awful, horrible, enormously unwanted suffering. Perhaps it need not be meaningless and pointless and emptiness. Perhaps it need not be despair and hopelessness. Perhaps we can find here the meaning of redemptive suffering, of accompanying Jesus, of going beyond even Simon the Cyrenian who was pressed into the service of carrying the Cross.

St. Paul said, "In my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ" (Col. 1:24). Again, can it be denied that this too speaks of R? In this redemptive suffering, in heroically enduring all of this with remarkable grace – all this pain, all these afflictions one after another after another after another – participating in the work of salvation by sharing in the undeserved suffering of Jesus, she was joined to Him far more that we are joined to Him by prayer.

True, it is not a "blessing" that anyone would really seek out, and is one that we would all rather God had taken away, we would all rather that she never have gone through that "hell" in the first place. But as difficult as it was to endure, and it was extremely difficult, being joined to Him nevertheless provided a measure of hope, rather than despair.  Suffering is inevitable in this world, but it need not be pointless and emptiness. We can find meaning, positive meaning -- the meaning of hope.

R survived that trial by fire, the latest in too many.  She should have died.  She very, very nearly did.  She should have been dead many times over by then.  She very nearly was.  But she survived.  Through much anguish, she endured.  She persevered.

Her lungs began to heal, new tissue grew.  She got out of that bed.  She walked.  She smiled, she laughed.  She rejoiced.  She was happy.

What saved her, what gave her the hope to go on was love.  Not the fairy-tale love of sunshine and happily-ever-after feelings, which come and go, but authentic love in all its manifestations, all of its ups and downs, all of its trials and tribulations.  As she demonstrated with her life, it is love which sustains us, love which heals us, love which saves us, love which gives us life.

It is only love and through love that we can have life, real life, the fullness of life.  By R’s faith, she understood that it is by the creative power of love that the universe was made.  And it was in the transformative power of love that fear was overcome and hope was found in the midst of hardship and suffering.  That is what sustained and healed her.

First, her own love, which among other things gave her a fierce determination to persevere, to keep on going through the worst hell imaginable, time and again.  The MSRA which savaged much of her lung tissue really did try to kick her ass, but she hung in there because her ass is mighty tough.  She is one tough mama.  This tiny little nearly 70-year-old woman is without a doubt the strongest person I know.  And she has given me one of the greatest life lessons I’ll ever learn.

Much of that strength was from her own loving spirit and stubborn will, but not all of it. She also had help to endure and fight.  Her body and doctors had help in healing that body, in comforting that mind.  And here is proof of the power of grace.  Grace, which is just another word for the healing power of love from the One who is Love, and also the power of prayer.

God’s love and our love.  Now, through her younger years, before the experience of Job fell upon her, R was not particularly super-religious, at least I did not think so.  But during the times of her afflictions, many times she would speak of feeling our prayers for her, gaining strength from them.  God, who is Love, would receive the love that we would each express in our prayers and in our actions, and He would multiply our love by His own, completely and perfectly, to give it all to her by His grace.

It doesn’t take a lot, just a spark, just an ember of love is enough.  Because of transformative and healing love, beyond the Passion, beyond our compassion of suffering with her rather than running away from it, there is new life.

Love passes through eternity, and it is love which gave her and gives us hope. It is love which sustains us, love which heals us, love which saves us, love which gives us life.