St Peter tells us not to be surprised when suffering comes: "Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ's sufferings" (1 Peter 4:12-13). That is not the side of Christianity we usually become excited about. We become excited about healing. We become excited about miracles. We want the Lord to touch what is broken, remove the pain and solve the problem. There is nothing wrong with asking for that. Jesus Himself invites the burdened to come to Him for rest.
But healing is only one side. There is another side to Christianity that we cannot push away simply because it is less attractive, and that is suffering. We sometimes judge the presence of God by the number of healings we can count. If many people raise their hands and say they were healed, we say, "What a powerful prayer meeting. God was present." If many people are still suffering, we can begin to think that somehow Jesus was not there. That is a serious mistake. The Cross tells us that the presence of suffering does not mean the absence of God.
If we want to understand Christian suffering, we have to understand Jesus and His death on the Cross. Today the cross is respectable. People wear crosses around their necks. Some wear them as earrings or tattoos, sometimes with faith and sometimes simply because they consider them fashionable. We can even give a small cross as a Baptism gift. But when Jesus took up the Cross, nobody thought it was fashionable. It was an instrument of shame, humiliation, slavery and death. He accepted the very thing people feared and despised because salvation and redemption would come through it.
Jesus Refused the Easy Way Around the Cross
The temptation of Jesus shows how deliberately He chose the Cross. After fasting forty days, the Word says Jesus was famished. I remember a driver at a retreat centre who had been fasting for two days and then joined a group doing heavy physical work. When it was over, he simply lay down and fell asleep. When they woke him, he looked blank. He did not even remember going to sleep or much of the work he had done. That kind of physical weakness affects the whole person.
Jesus was in that condition when Satan came to tempt Him. Satan always looks for the weak point. He first tells Jesus to turn stone into bread. Then he shows Him the kingdoms of the world and offers Him their glory and authority if only Jesus will bow down and worship him (Luke 4:3-8). What did Jesus come into the world for? To save the world, to reclaim what had been lost. He had come to save you and me. He knew that the road before Him led to the Cross, yet now He was being shown an easier way: take the kingdoms without the shame, brokenness and suffering of Calvary.
Jesus refuses. He does not choose the easier way out. He chooses suffering. He chooses the Cross because He knows salvation will come through that Cross. The temptation is not only about power or worship. It is also the temptation of easiness: achieve the goal without paying the cost.
The same temptation comes again through somebody much closer to Him. Peter makes the beautiful confession that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God, and Jesus tells him, "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build My Church." It is a big day for Peter. James and John were interested in the left and the right, but Peter has got the centre. He has the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Then Jesus begins to speak about Jerusalem, suffering and death. Peter takes Him aside and says, "God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to You." He thinks he is protecting Jesus, but Jesus turns and says, "Get behind Me, Satan!" (Matthew 16:21-23). Peter had been flying in the air with the keys of the Kingdom, and suddenly he is brought right down to earth. Why such a strong response? Because once again the suggestion is: avoid the Cross.
Jesus has one thing in front of Him, and that is the Cross. Through that suffering He will save His people. Then He turns to us and says, "If any want to become My followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow Me" (Matthew 16:24). A disciple is not merely somebody who has had a first encounter with Jesus. A disciple goes deeper into Jesus, and going deeper into Jesus means that we cannot ask only for His miracles and reject His Cross.
I once joked that Peter's mother-in-law was healed, which was a big thing in itself because Peter allowed his mother-in-law to be healed. But the disciples themselves are not presented as men travelling with Jesus because they are constantly seeking relief from suffering. They follow Him into a life that will cost them something. A disciple is called to suffer with Christ.
Suffering Can Become Salvific
Christian suffering is not meant to be empty. The first quality I see in it is that it can become salvific. Jesus' suffering was salvific. He did not use His suffering for Himself. Through His Cross salvation came to others. When we unite our suffering with Christ, we can offer it for people who are broken, for people who have lost faith and for those who need to return to Him.
I remember hearing about Fr John Parel, a priest in our congregation who died very young from cancer of the eye. The disease caused terrible suffering and disfigured his face so badly that eventually people were protected from seeing how severe it had become. Yet those who knew him remembered a saintly man who continued to smile. He did not spend his days demanding healing. He offered his suffering.
A woman had asked him to pray for her husband, who had not entered a church for about twenty-five years. Day after day, Fr John offered the suffering of that day for this man. About six months before Fr John died, some of the brothers came running into his room and told him, "Father, your prayers have become a reality." The man who had stayed away from church for twenty-five years had come in. They found him before the altar with his hands raised, weeping and praying to Jesus.
Someone might say, "One person after so much suffering?" But when that man returned to Christ, his whole family was affected. Fr John's suffering had been offered for him, and that suffering became part of another person's return to God. This is what I mean when I say Christian suffering can become salvific.
St Peter says that if we endure pain while doing what is right, we have God's approval (1 Peter 2:19-20). Jesus saved people through His suffering and death. A Christian can join suffering to that saving work instead of allowing pain to become only resentment, complaint and despair. We can say, "Lord, if this suffering can bring one soul back to You, I offer it."
That does not mean we are forbidden to pray for healing. Pray for healing. Ask for miracles. I have spent years praying with people for exactly those things. But if the suffering remains, we do not have to conclude that prayer has failed or that God has abandoned us. There is another question to ask: "Lord, what can You do through this suffering?"
Suffering Purifies and Forms Christ in Us
The second quality of suffering is purification. Suffering often shows us things about ourselves that comfort allows us to ignore. Hebrews reminds Christians of the hard struggles they endured after being enlightened, including abuse and persecution (Hebrews 10:32-33). Difficult circumstances can expose what needs to change and bring us back to what matters.
A man once came to me walking with great difficulty after a stroke had paralysed half his body. I immediately raised my hands to pray for his healing. He stopped me and said, "Father, if you are going to pray for healing, I do not want that." I was surprised because people usually ask me to pray for healing.
He told me that the stroke had brought him back to Christ. Before it happened he had been drinking heavily, smoking and treating his wife abusively. Nothing people said had changed him. Then the stroke came. He began to pray. He gave up drinking and smoking. As his wife cared for him in bed, he began to see how precious she was and how badly he had lived before. He told me, "This stroke has purified me." He did not want to forget what the suffering had shown him.
Sometimes it takes a knock before we understand that something in us has to change. We can live as though our health will always remain, our plans will always work and our strength will always be there. Then sickness or another crisis comes, and suddenly God becomes important. We ask everybody first: friends, colleagues, perhaps even the priest. Sometimes God seems to be one of the last people we ask. Suffering can strip away that illusion of self-sufficiency and turn us back toward Him.
This is why I say we should receive suffering with the same open hands with which we receive graces, healings and miracles. Ultimately life is not only about the body, emotions or what happens today. It is about the soul. If suffering becomes the means by which I come to my senses and return to God, then the pain has not been meaningless.
Suffering also produces endurance. St Paul says, "We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope" (Romans 5:3-4). What character? The character of Christ. Ultimately you and I are supposed to become another Christ. We cannot ask to possess the values and qualities of Jesus while refusing everything in His life that involved sacrifice.
If you ask God for gifts of healing, prophecy, counselling or preaching, then be willing also to ask for the gift of suffering, because suffering is part and parcel of the life of Jesus Christ. We cannot say, "Lord, give me the miracles, the gifts and the power, but You keep the rest for Yourself." We take it all.
Think of the familiar image of a butterfly struggling to emerge from a cocoon. We may look at the struggle and think the kind thing would be to tear the cocoon open and make the passage easier. But the struggle is part of the process by which the butterfly becomes strong enough for life outside. In the same way, some of the suffering we would immediately remove can become the very place where Christian endurance is strengthened.
I saw something of that in a young seminarian named Shinto, who was only in his early twenties when he was diagnosed with leukaemia. Before the diagnosis he and his companions had joked about the strange growths appearing on his body. He had been a good actor in the seminary and was remembered particularly for once playing the role of a sculptor.
During his illness he wrote to a close friend. He said that once he had been the sculptor, but now he was the sculpture and the Lord was the sculptor. Through the pain, he imagined God chipping away what was unwanted and preserving what was good, preparing him for the Kingdom of God. A few weeks after writing that letter, he died.
He was barely twenty-three or twenty-four. His parents had hoped to see him become a priest. Yet the way he carried his suffering became a witness even to older members of the congregation. He joined his pain to the suffering of Christ. When I think of him, I think of the Lord welcoming him and saying, "My son, you have done well."
Do Not Treat God Like a Dispensing Machine
St Paul himself knew what it was to ask for suffering to be removed and hear a different answer. He speaks of the thorn in his flesh and says that three times he appealed to the Lord to take it away. The answer was not removal. The answer was, "My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:7-9).
Sometimes the Lord does not take the thorn away. He gives grace to endure it. We can ask why. Job asked why. There is nothing strange about crying, questioning or struggling when suffering comes. I am not suggesting that the moment something painful happens we smile and say, "Wonderful, Lord, thank You for this." Job struggled. He questioned. But ultimately he came to acceptance: the Lord gave, the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.
Humility is necessary here. Everything I have is from God. Nothing is truly self-created. We came into this world helpless. We did not know one word, one letter or one thing to do. God provided, people cared for us, and life was given to us. Yet after receiving again and again, we can start treating God as though He owes us whatever we ask.
We sometimes treat Jesus like a dispensing machine. Put the coin in, press the button, and something is supposed to come out. If it does not, what do people do to a machine? They kick it, bang it and become angry. We can do the same thing spiritually: "Lord, I put in my prayer. Where is my answer?" If it does not come, we accuse Him of not loving us or not listening.
I once met a man who was complaining about a problem and discovered that this was his seventh retreat. At the first retreat he had received one healing. At the second he had received another. Again and again he could point to something God had done, but now one prayer remained unanswered and suddenly his conclusion was, "The Lord does not love me anymore." We forget years of faithfulness because one present suffering has not been removed.
Look back at your own life. How many times has God been faithful when you did not expect any solution? Do not allow one unanswered prayer to erase all of that. Take suffering in humility. If circumstances do not change, pray as Jesus prayed: "Not my will, but Yours be done."
If the physical pain I carry can be offered for a soul that needs to return to Christ, Lord, let Your will be done. If a family situation remains broken despite prayer, I can place that pain into His hands instead of allowing it to make me bitter. If a couple longs for a child and that prayer remains unanswered, the pain is real. Frustration and tears are real. But even that sorrow can be surrendered: "Lord, I do not understand this, but I place it before You. Use even this suffering for Your purposes."
There is a great difference between surrender and pretending that suffering does not hurt. Christian acceptance is not denial. It is refusing to conclude that pain has no meaning simply because it has not been removed.
We Take the Whole Christ
Jesus never promised us a life without brokenness, pain or insult. What He promised was His presence. "I will be with you." When suffering comes, fear not. When brokenness comes, fear not. The Lord walks with you.
I am not going to give you a prosperity gospel and tell you that if you have enough faith everything will always turn out comfortably. There is no such prosperity gospel for the Christian life. If you are in union with Christ, suffering will come. It is part and parcel of Christian discipleship, and God can use it to deepen our union with Him.
The question is what we do when it arrives. Do we spend half our life complaining about the cross we carry? Do we accept every healing and miracle with both hands but immediately throw suffering back at God? Or do we allow Him to make suffering salvific, purifying and formative within us?
A disciple takes up the cross and follows. The cross may come through physical pain, family brokenness, disappointment, persecution, loss or circumstances we never chose. We may ask why. We may pray for change. We may seek healing. But when the cross remains, we can still carry it with Christ rather than carry it alone.
Mother Mary did not live a life without sorrow simply because she was the Mother of God. She walked with Jesus toward Calvary and carried her own pain without throwing away her fidelity. Ask for the grace to carry your own cross with that same faithfulness.
One day the sorrow will not have the final word. Jesus says, "You will have pain, but your pain will turn into joy" (John 16:20). Our suffering is not our destination. Christ is our destination. The Cross leads to resurrection, endurance forms the character of Christ, and hope does not disappoint because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
So do not ask only for the gifts of Jesus while refusing the Cross of Jesus. We take the whole Christ. When healing comes, receive it with gratitude. When the miracle comes, praise Him. When suffering remains, ask for grace to carry it faithfully. Offer what can be offered, allow it to purify what must be purified, let it form endurance within you, and trust that the Lord who walks beside you can turn even pain toward salvation, holiness and finally joy.