Why, Lord?
Perhaps one of the unique teachings in the Catholic faith is the value of our suffering, which means making sense of our suffering. All of us, in some way, have experienced suffering and injustice, aren't we? The scriptures provide us with insight on how we can make sense of suffering.
In the book of Job, we learn his story of being a richly endowed person, gifted with family and prosperity, yet a humble and upright man who feared God and avoided evil, overturned to lose his children and his property. Nonetheless, Job does not complain against God. He exclaimed, "God gave and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord!" St. Thomas Aquinas asserts, "The name of the Lord is truly blessed by men inasmuch as they have knowledge of his goodness, namely that he distributes all things well and does nothing unjustly." The meaning behind this is that God always and only wills what is good for all. After Job’s experience of suffering, he pleaded with God to see Him and hear from him the cause of his suffering. God answers, not by justifying his action before men but by referring to his own omniscience and almighty power. God answered Job with a rhetorical question: "Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand, Who marked off its dimensions?" This led Job to truly contemplate what the Lord did throughout the whole existence of the world, from the beginning.
It reminds us of God's infinite wisdom in allowing suffering and evil in the world. God allows it, and only God alone can share it with you, hopefully when you join Him Heaven. The counsel of St. John of the Cross is worth doing whenever we are experiencing some injustice and sin: just look at Christ crucified and be still with it. There, it can answer the questions of our suffering, though not fully, but one thing we are assured of is that He died for you and me to save us and to make our sufferings an occasion for us to offer them up to the Lord for the benefit of others. This is a test of faith, and it's an opportunity for us to purify our motive in loving the Lord and His people.
