Accepting to Suffer When Loving
Pietà (Michelangelo)
We love because God first loved us (1 John 4:19), and God’s divine love for humanity was most fully revealed and deeply felt in Christ’s crucifixion through His gift of self for us. In the same manner, when we suffer, we most wholeheartedly love God. As we live comfortably in earthly delights, we forget to pray, or do not pray enough. He is not appreciated or loved how He deserves. With suffering, our faith reawakens and actively exists in our constant breaths as we desperately put our trust in Him. We are humbled as we surrender our hearts in complete dependence and realized love for Him. “‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness… for when I am weak, then I am strong.’” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). As our faith cries out for Him, clinging onto His presence and mercy, He is appreciated and loved.
Suffering thus acquires a redemptive dimension as love gives meaning to suffering, whilst suffering itself reveals the true depth of love. Love and suffering are deeply linked, as they give each other authenticity.
Similarly, loving on Earth and having a Beloved puts us in a vulnerable position to accept varied forms of suffering. To love means to accept suffering in the form of helplessness because we cannot protect them from pain. To love means to accept suffering in the form of shared suffering because their pain becomes ours. To love means to accept suffering in the form of sacrifice because we choose their desires above our own. But love drives out the fear of suffering, and instead uses it to fiercely show the Beloved the overwhelming depth of one’s love.
We first accept suffering in the form of helplessness. The divine gift to perceive and have someone that echoes God’s love exists alongside the overwhelming realization that we can lose them. Worst of all, we cannot protect them — not from illness, accidents, or death.
In The Great Divorce, C.S. Lewis notes that one drop of Heaven, even as small as an atom, can outweigh all of Hell. In this light, the suffering and pain we endure—our Hell—pales in comparison to the joy that comes from truly loving. The drop of joy we get from loving someone, and showing them, is enough to let us keep suffering the risk of living without them. The consistent and persistent decision to suffer reveals unconditional love, as you willingly bear discomfort if it means to love them. As Fr. Robert Southwell wrote, “To love him life, to leave him death, to live in him delight.”
Another channel of suffering exists in the form of shared suffering. The intimate connection gained from overwhelming love means that when the Beloved suffers, the other, too, bears the pain it is for that sacred, fragile gift to suffer. In fact, we turn to self-resentment when one refuses to share in the suffering of another. It is disturbing to think that our soul is unbothered and even shut off from that of another. We want to suffer with our love, for it means our hearts of flesh have not become hearts of stone, and that our Beloved is still so. At the foot of the Cross, Mary was not only suffering the pain of losing her son, but suffering the same torturous pain the fruit of her womb (Luke 1:42) felt as He was nailed.
Love also presents suffering in the form of sacrifice. In our desperation to take away or reduce our Beloved’s suffering, we selflessly add to our own personal suffering. Because love is giving, our suffering serves to augment it. We want to sacrifice a little bit of hunger if it means our Beloved does not. We want to sacrifice a boring 45-minute drive to the airport if it means our Beloved doesn’t pay $45 for a ride. We want to sacrifice a few steps to grab something upstairs for our Beloved if it means they do not have to.
Sacrifice is essential to the proclamation of love as no other way do you die, killing your desires, to put theirs first. Letting yourself die for them welcomes them inside you. Suffering from sacrifice is embodying love. Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself to me.” Through love, we are united with God for it is in dying to one’s old life and identifying with Him instead that we become Christ-dependent and Christ-loving. Galatians demonstrates an equal paradox, in which Christ’s crucifixion and the death of our desires in a new life under God reveal the depth of love for each other.
As humans, we attempt to limit how much we must suffer. Humans have turned to Buddhism in an attempt to detach themselves from love, and even gain a reward for being detached in the form of Nirvana. Humans have turned to Stoicism in an attempt to “handle” suffering to instead use it for self-improvement and see it as something that can be practically managed. Humans have turned to emotional numbness and desired to not even marry as it demands the death of oneself for another.
What these forms of detachment share is an attempt to overcome the pain of suffering. They have egotistically chosen not to love because they get to avoid suffering.
But as reflected in Christian theology, as children of God, it is in our nature to love, and suffering reveals it most intimately and transparently. Freely choosing to suffer gives meaning to our love, and our love is purified through suffering. Is it love if we groaned about washing the dishes after the Beloved cooked? Is it love if Mary hadn't suffered at the foot of the cross with her Son? Is it love if we didn't choose to carry our cross every day? Is it love if Christ didn't sacrifice Himself?
Bibliography
1. https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/column/52599/love-and-suffering-paradox-of-love
2. The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis
3. https://www.luminarium.org/renlit/child.htm
4. Genesis 1:27