“It must somehow be God’s will.” Hopefully, you’ve never been subjected to those words. When faced with tragedy – especially unexpected and senseless tragedy – it is difficult to stay in the tension without trying to assign blame or find a reason for the suffering.
The idea that our pain and loss are somehow “God’s will” is a sad half-truth. It’s sad because it reflects a limp and passionless relationship with God the Father, and a half-truth because suffering is never God’s “Plan A.” Yet, he does use it.
The assertion that God did not make suffering can sound heretical and sacrilegious. Haven’t we always been taught to embrace the cross and carry on? The Church’s focus on suffering has been intense for one main reason: suffering is everywhere, and we need to make sense of it. But the frequency and prevalence of pain should not distract us from our central identity. We are children of God. We were made for heaven, not for suffering. Suffering was not God’s original plan. Yet, here we are.
To truly know the Father, we have to know who he is. He is a Father who has set out to rescue his children at any cost. As it turns out, the cost of rescuing us from pain and death was the betrayal and brutal death of his most dearly beloved Son.
And yet, “God did not make death” (Wisdom 1:13).
Over the centuries, a theology of suffering has developed in the Church since Christ’s death on the cross. Popes have written encyclicals on salvation through suffering (see St. John Paul II’s Salvifici Doloris). Saints have died horrific, painful deaths “for the greater glory of God.” Their sacrifices and contributions, of course, are not in vain. They add richness and focus to our experience of faith here on Earth. In heaven, however, there is no longer a need for faith or suffering, because neither serves a purpose once we are with God.
Scripture tells us that when Lazarus died, Jesus wept. Many of us have wondered: why did Jesus weep when he knew he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead? In his book The Healing of Families, Ugandan priest Father Joseph Ssemakula writes that Jesus wept because he knew raising Lazarus would not keep him from dying again in the body. At that moment, Father Joseph suggests, Jesus lamented the fact that all the people he loves – his friend Lazarus and all of us – must suffer and die. This was not God the Father’s original plan, and it “pains Jesus to the point of weeping.” “And I hope you realize,” Father Joseph writes, “that Jesus’ weeping is actually the Father weeping.”
“What Jesus displays at Lazarus’ house is God’s heart and mind in front of our death,” Father Joseph writes. The Psalmist says, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful ones” (Psalm 116:15). Father Joseph explains that yes, the Father will raise us up, “but that is only a Plan B – a recovery plan. And even then, for only some of us; some people will never recover from death at all, they will be gone forever!”
God’s original plan was indeed thwarted, but this does not mean all is lost. Far from it. The worst-case scenario has already taken place. Jesus, fully God and fully man, died in the flesh. Yet, in that one act, we have been snatched from the grip of the enemy.
Now, there is no question about our identity. We know our worth because we know what God was willing to pay for us: everything.
This truth should fill our hearts when we approach the Lord in prayer or face tragedy. Instead of waiting for the next tragedy to fall, we can choose to await our homecoming with the certainty and joy of those who know they are loved to the point of folly.
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