Unite Your Suffering With Christ

By Donna Winchell

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682), “Christ after the Flagellation”

Lent invites us to focus on the suffering and death of Jesus and ultimately, His resurrection. It is a time to remember that we can hand our struggles over to God and allow Him to reshape them as a source of healing. During Lent, we are invited to unite our suffering with Christ’s so it can become redemptive. Redemptive suffering is the most beautiful and perfect love, because while we offer our suffering in unity with Christ, He is with us the whole time. He walks with us in that suffering and never leaves us alone.

Pope St. John Paul II talked about it in this way:

“Those who share in Christ’s sufferings have before their eyes the Paschal Mystery of the Cross and Resurrection, in which Christ descends, in a first phase, to the ultimate limits of human weakness and impotence: indeed, he dies nailed to the Cross. But if at the same time in this weakness there is accomplished his lifting up, confirmed by the power of the Resurrection, then this means that the weaknesses of all human sufferings are capable of being infused with the same power of God manifested in Christ’s Cross.”

Just thinking about this reminded me of the intense suffering and grief I experienced when my husband passed away a couple years ago. Although it was a part of life, it caused such pain, both physically and mentally. When I handed my struggles over to God, I found myself looking inward. God was my source of healing. I saw what I was made of, what I was holding onto and what I wanted the most above all else – my relationship with Him. It was then that I knew I was not alone, my comfort abounded through our Holy Lord, I felt transformed – an emotionally healing process, God never left me alone.

Paul talks about the God of all comfort, the Father of all compassion, Who brings hope and healing to our hearts in and through the ministry of His Spirit among us:

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ.” (2 Corinthians 1:3-5, NIV)

It is inevitable that each of us will experience suffering. We all suffer pain in body and in spirit, these are our trials. If we want to be used by God for His glory, we must be prepared. God entrusts us with trials. Lots of them. This is our share in Christ’s suffering. Yet, it’s precisely during these times of hardship that we can feel weighed down. Our role is to unite our suffering with that of Jesus’ suffering to create an eternal offering of love.

When we are going through a trying time, when life has been touched by any type of suffering – death, chronic illness, loneliness, even despair – Jesus knows.  Whatever pain or hardship we undergo can be offered up to God in union with Christ’s suffering to give it a redemptive quality. The saints tell us not to avoid suffering but to welcome it; to seek suffering with Christ and to allow Him in His steadfast love to comfort and transform us.

“The Redeemer suffered in place of man and for man. Every man has his own share in the Redemption. Each one is also called to share in that suffering through which the Redemption was accomplished. He is called to share in that suffering through which all human suffering has also been redeemed. In bringing about the Redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the Redemption. Thus each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ.”                      

                                    – St. John Paul II

Let's Pray.

God, when the road grows dark and life gets difficult, remind us that you too suffered and were persecuted. Remind us that we are not alone, and even now you see us. Help us to remember that you have paved the way for us. You have taken the sin of the world upon yourself, and you are with us in every trial. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.

                                    – Prayer By Alistair Begg