What to do with Suffering?

All of our lives, are filled with pain and suffering. Suffering is not negotiable. And the suffering will be transformative in our lives: it will either make us bitter and miserable, or it will make us compassionate and more alive. 

Like Jesus, we need to learn how to hold on to the pain in our lives, to be present to it, to surrender to it until we’ve learned its lessons. 

This is a great teaching moment where you have the possibility of breaking through to a deeper level of faith and consciousness. There is a greater Divine life beneath the surface of our pain.

If you can surrender and Hold on to the pain of being human…God will transform you through it. And then you will be an instrument of transformation for others.

As an example of holding the pain, picture Mary standing at the foot of the cross. Standing would not be the normal posture of a Jewish woman who is supposed to wail and lament and show pain externally. She’s holding the pain instead. She is present to it, surrendered to it.

Mary is in complete solidarity with the mystery of life and death. She’s trying to say, “There’s something deeper happening here. How can I absorb it just as Jesus is absorbing it?” 

Until you find a way to be a transformer, you will pass the pain onto others.

Jesus on the cross and Mary standing by the cross are images of transformative religion. They are never transmitting the pain to others. 

They hold the suffering… until it becomes resurrection! 

That’s the core mystery. It takes our whole life to comprehend this, and then to become God’s “new creation” (Galatians 6:15). 

Unfortunately, we have the natural instinct to fix pain, to control it, or even, foolishly, to try to understand it. The ego always insists on understanding. That’s why Jesus praises a certain quality even more than love, and he calls it faith. It is the ability to stand on the threshold, until you move to a deeper level where it all eventually makes sense in God’s grace.

Today is Passion Sunday, when we begin to see Jesus’ suffering as transformative for the world.

We are to join our sufferings to Christ’s, and be part of the process of transformation and freedom for ourselves, in our families, and in the world.