John Paul II and the Meaning of Suffering by Robert Schroeder

Author:Robert Schroeder [Schroeder, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Our Sunday Visitor
Published: 2012-10-22T10:58:53+00:00

Embracing God's Love

According to John Paul, we find insights into this deep question of faith only in Jesus' revelation of God's love, "the ultimate source of the meaning of everything that exists." Jesus came into the world to show us the magnificent love of God, who doesn't desire our pain but our salvation — our eternal liberation from the evil of suffering. "This answer," says the pope, "has been given by God to man in the Cross of Jesus Christ." Last February when I was watching the Super Bowl, the camera panned over to a fan holding a sign. Painted on it in big black letters was John 3:16. The biblical passage referenced reads, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life." There, in the midst of a sea of frenzied football fans, stood a lone prophet proclaiming the central dogma of Christianity — the love God has for us is so big, so radical, that He became one of us and died on the Cross to bring us into the joy of His life forever.

Jesus shared this good news with Nicodemus and His followers two millennia ago. Since then, the message has become so ingrained in our Christian rituals and literature that we sometimes gloss over it without embracing its true significance. John Paul calls us to look at Jesus' words recorded in John 3:16 afresh, with new eyes, and remember this most essential truth for our lives —Jesus' death on the Cross was God's supreme act of love for us. The Cross is the ring that weds us to the ever-living God who created us out of nothing; it is the font that pours forth God's grace to cleanse us of our sins and renew our spirit; it is the key that opens the heavenly gates to an everlasting future where our tired, aging bodies will be raised in glory and happiness. Amazed by such an awesome gift of love, each of us can marvel with St. Paul that Jesus "loved me and gave himself for me" (Gal. 2:20).

The pope encourages us to keep this Gospel truth ablaze in our hearts as we suffer. Suffering is an evil that hurts us. But our salvation, accomplished by Jesus' passion and death, expresses God's loving desire to free us from suffering for all eternity. According to the pope, this is what salvation means. To save, he says, is "to free man from evil, which bears within itself the definitive and absolute perspective on suffering."

In other words, God gave his Son to free us from worst form of suffering we could ever imagine — the loss of eternal life. Even more terrible than the most agonizing physical pain and horrific death on earth is being forever separated from God. John Paul explains:

The opposite of salvation is not, therefore, only temporal suffering, any kind of suffering, but the definitive suffering: the loss of eternal life, being rejected by God, damnation.

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