On Monday, October 25, 2021, Mexican Father Mario Arroyo Martinez shared with Exaudi’s readers his weekly article in “Theology for Millennials” entitled “Pain in a Christian Key,” where he explains the salvific meaning of pain for a Christian and how Christ, from the Cross, teaches us to love it.
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A medical student asked: “Father, the New Letter to Health Care Workers says that some people can refuse analgesics to unite themselves to Jesus Christ’s Cross, to offer their pain to God. What does God gain from our suffering? Such an assertion makes no sense to me. In fact, the student’s observation is very acute and understandable in a de-Christianized world. In the recent Magisterium, few are the places where such a possibility is found; it seems to be a lost practice, a residue of former tremendous visions of Christianity.
However, this perspective has not disappeared altogether from the Church’s Magisterium and from Christian practice. Suffice it to recall the texts of the New Letter to Health Care Workers, a document of 2017, which in number 95 states: “Pain can have for a Christian high penitential and salvific meaning . . . Hence, it should not be surprising that some Christians want to moderate the use of analgesics, to accept voluntarily at least a part of their sufferings and thus associate themselves, consciously, to the sufferings of Christ crucified.”
Another text is that of Benedict XVI in number 40 of his Encyclical Spe Salvi, where it seems he engages in a reminiscence of practices that are now virtually lost or in disuse in the Church, but that it would be good to recover. “The idea of being able to ‘offer’ small daily difficulties, which plague us over and over again, as more or less annoying pangs, thus giving them meaning, was part of a form of devotion that was still very widespread until not too long ago, although today perhaps less practiced. In this devotion, there were, without a doubt, exaggerated and perhaps even unhealthy things. However, it’s good to ask oneself if perhaps it did not entail in some way something essential that could be of help to us. What does it mean to ‘offer’? These people were convinced of being able to include their small difficulties in the great compassion of Christ, that thus they might become part in some way of the treasure of compassion that the human race needs. So small daily adversities could also find meaning and contribute to fomenting goodness and love among men.”
It’s worthwhile citing them at length as the Magisterium’s allusions to this reality are quite sporadic, <a reality> which, on the other hand, is quite common. We must face the issue of pain and give it Christian meaning. The medical student saw the opportunity to offer such pain if it couldn’t be avoided, but he didn’t understand the fact of not avoiding suffering if one could do so. It’s not his fault; he has grown up in a hedonistic environment where pleasure is the good, which must be sought, and pain is bad and must be avoided. The possibility did not enter his head of not willingly avoiding pain. This was a practical, authentic sample of the secularized, profoundly de-Christianized culture. In face of this culture and mentality, the Christian message of penance might seem more or less Greek, that is, incomprehensible.
The reality of the Cross is not the nuclear but the medullar theme in Christianity: the suffering of Christ and our possibility to unite ourselves to that suffering. A Christian without a cross is not a genuine Christian. It’s worthwhile to recall some of the “advantages” of pain, read in a Christian key, as it is a reality that we can’t avoid altogether and which we have had to face abruptly now during the pandemic. Pain is ambivalent: it can destroy us interiorly or it can make us grow, mature, be more human, and understanding with our fellowmen. We all have sins; hence, we all need penance to purify ourselves and to be able to enjoy God at the end of our lives. And a more profound, “mystical” meaning of suffering is the spiritual possibility to unite ourselves to the suffering Jesus through it.
A complete catechesis on the Christian meaning of suffering is found in Saint John Paul II’s 1984 Letter Salvifici Doloris. It’s worthwhile to read it again, to dust it, as we are facing suffering without Christian keys capable of giving it a positive meaning. Deep down, what Jesus teaches us on the Cross is to love through pain. Sometimes we can look for pain to love that way, but sometimes we can’t avoid it and we need to find that way, to give it meaning and make it more bearable.
Translation by Virginia M. Forrester
