“For it was fitting that (God), for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the leader to their salvation (Jesus) perfect through suffering.” (Hebrews 2:10). To become “perfect through suffering” sounds crazy at first. Who wants to suffer? No one does. Yet suffering is part of human life and it can be a prime teacher of wisdom.
Over the past year, suffering seems to surround us, not just with the pandemic but with the violence of racial inequalities and discrimination, the demonization of others and political violence. Suffering can either destroy a person or it can be the foundation of great virtue and wisdom – especially of faith, perseverance and compassion.
As the saying goes, if you want to understand another person, walk in their shoes for a while. One of the themes of the Letter to the Hebrews is that we can be sure God understands us because Jesus walked in our shoes. Through the Incarnation, Jesus walks in humanity for a lifetime, embracing the human condition from conception to death. Jesus knows both the joys and the sufferings of the human condition and brings this into the Trinity. We can be sure that God understands us and has compassion for us, because God became one of us in Jesus.
But how can suffering make one perfect? For God, perfection is about love. Love is what makes us like God, or as the First Letter of John puts it: “Love is of God: everyone who loves is begotten of God and knows God, for God is love” (4:7-8).
How often do we see movements against breast cancer, or substance abuse, or lead in drinking water, or hunger in a poor country or neighborhood, which is spearheaded by a person who has either suffered from the disease or situation, or who walked with a family member who suffered in that way, or who lived with those who suffered? Suffering can teach us compassion – the love that feels with the other and works for healing.
So often in the Gospels, we see Jesus moved with compassion to heal the sick, feed the hungry or forgive the sinner. Those who give a year or two of service through the Jesuit Volunteer Corps after college half-joke that they have been “ruined for life.” Having worked with the poor, the mentally handicapped, the forgotten on reservations, the children in inner-city schools, abused women and others, they can no longer live in a carefree, selfish way. The people they worked with have become part of their lives, part of their prayer, part of their small community sharing, and part of their reflection on retreat. These experiences then helped to form their future lives. Many have become teachers, doctors, nurses, social workers, lawyers and politicians – using their skills with compassion for those on the margins of society.
While serving in ministry in another state, I had the privilege of being the spiritual director for a woman whose great practical compassion came from what she had suffered. I am able to share her story because she had a weekly show about faith and justice that aired on the town’s local cable channel in which she talked frankly about her past. In the days before abortion became legal, her mother tried to abort her through chemical means. The abortion failed and she was born some months later, but she continues to suffer from the physical consequences of the chemical. As she grew up, she married and had a few children. Unfortunately, her husband was abusive and when she became pregnant with their fourth child he pressured her to have an abortion. The marriage ended in divorce and she struggled with poverty. At this point she turned to the Church. Her faith grew, and she knew not only
God’s forgiveness but began to experience His healing. Through her healing process, she started a food pantry in her town and then launched her faith-based show on the town’s cable network. The trauma of her sad life experiences have allowed her to speak to those who come to the food pantry due to their own struggles with poverty, and sometimes even abuse and abortion. She learned compassion and wisdom from what she suffered, and her counsel and sharing of her own faith has helped others.
Clearly, God does not want suffering. But we live in a fallen world, and it is into that fallen world that Jesus entered. He came to be a light in the darkness and a path to eternal life. With the help of His grace, even suffering can be turned to good – if it leads us to grow in compassion and persevering in faith.
Will we listen with open ears and a compassionate heart as our black and brown brothers and sisters share the sufferings they encounter in American society? Will we put aside the selfish individualism that refuses to follow the CDC guidelines on controlling the spread of COVID-19? Will we listen to the grievances of those who distrust our government and work to overcome the demonization of others, and support those who work for a nation where all are equal, and some are not more equal than others?
St. Paul encourages us in Romans: “What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or the sword? ... No, in all these things we conquer overwhelmingly through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that … (nothing) will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (8:35, 37, 39). Will we allow the present suffering to be the source of our conversion as Christians and as a nation to the love of God in Christ Jesus, our Lord?
Jesuit Father John Michalowski is the parochial vicar of St. Peter Church in Charlotte.