Faith and suffering - ebook

INTRODUCTION

Faith and suffering are inextricably linked. Numerous studies show that people deal with suffering and life hardship easier when they believe in something, than when they stay alone with the inner emptiness. Faith, which is a gift from God as well as hope and love, lets every experience of life and every kind of suffering be accepted easier and eases the trouble of carrying your daily cross with Christ.

The book ”Faith and suffering” is a response to God’s calling that His sacrifice on the cross was not in vain and that human suffering was not wasted. This also fulfills the needs of patients and their families, carers, hospital chaplains and medical staff. A lot of people try to avoid illness, suffering and death but these are inevitable and we all await them. It is important to experience them with God.

In this book we find a theological explanation of the meaning of human suffering, including the suffering of children, written on the basis of the experience of the priestly ministry. We will look at the life of Saint John Paul II, which was marked by multiple sufferings, which continues to show us how to suffer with Christ. We meet Mother Teresa and Padre Pio who confronted suffering every day. We will realize what the particular vocation of a nurse, a nun caring for the sick or a doctor is dependent on. We’ll learn where to look for strength during a disease and will find some useful prayers and reflections.

The book also contains testimonies of people who completely trusted God and He transformed their lives through the intercession prayer healing their soul, psyche and body.

The concept of this book was born during one of the conversations during which the coauthor shared her experiences from hospital with a priest. She was affected by a particular suffering, but also experienced the grace of God. She spoke about her fifty-day-hospitalization. Her total trust in God resulted from the process of maturation of her faith and inner transformation. God not only kept her alive, but He has also blessed her with many graces. She experienced incomprehensible love of God and His unfathomable mercy — in this book we will find her extensive testimony.

In a hospital, many patients suffer without God, and God who loves every person after all and gave his life for each on the cross, suffers with them. A view of a dying patient alone, even when the family escaped from her bed into the corridor instead of accompanying her in this last way and support her, it is a sufficient reason to make people aware, especially the closest, of the necessity of helping the dying.

The talks, reflections and the common co-work of the authors resulted in the creation of this specific vademecum / handbook of suffering, written in the spirit of the apostolate of Saint Vincent Pallotti (Father Ireneusz Łukanowski is a Pallottine). Saint Vincent leaned with evangelical love over every man but in a special way over the ill, the prisoners, unloved children, the lost young people and above all over any human misery; he adopted the words of Saint Paul as his own:

”The love of Christ impels us” (2 Cor 5:14), encouraging us to revive faith, rekindle love and strengthen hope in the hearts of people.

In the book ”Faith and suffering” the authors try to answer important questions that nearly each of us asks of themselves: What is the point of suffering in the light of our faith? What is the place of suffering in our faith? Why does our faith allow suffering? The authors hope that this book will help readers deepen their faith and strengthen the relationship with the Raised Christ.

Barbara Zielonka

Father Ireneusz Łukanowski SAC1. Suffering has many faces

”The most severe disease is neither leprosy nor cancer,

but loneliness — the awareness of being left by all.

Those people suffer most who are sad, without love and left on their own”.

Blessed Mother Teresa

A man is not able to explain to the end the mystery of suffering. Jesus Christ gives the full light of explaining human suffering through his death and resurrection, which together give the ultimate meaning of human suffering. ”If Christ has not been raised; your faith would be futile” (1 Cor 15:17).

Suffering accompanies every human being. There is not anyone and there will not be anyone who would be free from it. It accompanies everybody at birth, during life and at death. Mary repeatedly said about its relation with the human being’s life during the apparitions, the most recently in Kibeho, Rwanda. (These are the Marian apparitions approved by the Church in 2001. And they took place in the years 1981-1983). The Mother of God manifesting to three girls told them, among others things about the mystery of suffering, as the way to salvation and at the same time a chance of penance and satisfaction for so many sins committed in the world.

There are different faces of suffering and it is difficult to expose them to a satisfactory classification. It is usually talked about physical, moral or mental and spiritual suffering, but we will discuss their broader meaning in a subsequent publication.

Suffering has indeed many faces, but there is only one possibility of dealing with it. If we are to suffer, so it should be only with Christ. Jesus, God and Man, who knows human suffering precisely because he experienced it himself in his human body; as God he knows it from inside the soul and understands it best. He came to earth for each of us and died on the cross to give us salvation. Now He is waiting for our invitation, without imposing anything, gently, so as not to violate a human’s free will. He wants to help each of us because He loves us with an everlasting love, regardless of what we are like. If we give back the cross of our life to Christ, He will carry it together with us and it will be already his cross and it will be easier for us to go ahead.

His Mother — Mary Immaculate showed us how to suffer with Jesus. She did not have an easy life — from the Annunciation through the birth of Jesus, escape from Herod to Egypt, the three-day looking for her Son, who remained at the temple, leading a poor life, at first at the side of the carpenter — Saint Joseph, then as a widow until the trial of Jesus, the death sentence, the way of the cross and her Son’s death on the cross. She accepted all sufferings without a shadow of complaint, without a word of regret or a doubt but she accepted it being totally humble, always singing Fiat and Magnificat for the Lord. The total trust in God in every case and worshiping Him for everything what He did in her life, is an example for us which we are to follow to the best of our abilities.

Have you ever thought what is the sense of life of an ugly larva, which only eats leaves and practically it is not needed by anyone or anything? Something might sometimes remove it from the tree or it may fall off it. Then it will climb up again and continue destroying the leaves, without arousing anyone’s sympathy. And it lives on even though nobody knows what for.

Until one day, its body motionlessly turns into a chrysalis and dies. Soon, to the surprise of all, a butterfly emerges, stunning everyone with its unexpected beauty. It turns out that this ugly larva lived in order to give a life to it and allow it to develop.

It happens similarly with our life — regardless of how sick or crippled it is and seemingly senseless. But one day there will be a transformation of each of us unannounced and previously invisible to the eye. It will turn out that each of us has got a beautiful soul, created in the image and similarity of God, the soul destined for another life — the life with God. The human body also needs to be petrified and die, so that it will be able to reveal a different life — the life of an immortal soul. And it will be the more beautiful, the more suffering is accepted in life, and which will be improved through, a person consuming Eucharistic food — the Body and Blood of the Lord.

Our life is just a transitional stage on the way to the true homeland. Heaven awaits us, because our Savior has already opened it to us. However, our cooperation with Him is needed. It is necessary to be open to God’s gifts and graces too. Without our invitation and opening the proverbial door, which has a handle only from the inside, Jesus will not be able to come into our heart and live in it to help us. And the Savior is still waiting with His love and mercy for our permission to be able to give them to us.

God still heals, cures, repentants — He has not changed in this respect for ages. He loves each of us and wants to come to every open heart. We should just pray and trust Him implicitly because faith performs wonders.

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