The greatest writers say that you should write everyday. I suppose it’s fitting that the day I try to reinvigorate my writing is on the feast day of a man who apparently wrote the equivalent of 20 Bibles during his pontificate. He also knew multiple languages, and would pray for hours a day. While I could dive into the long-winded story of how I came to have a devotion to John Paul II, it would only perplex the Protestants that read this Stack and bore the Catholics who know that it’s pretty much a guarantee that you’re going to end up loving this pope at some point in your faith journey. For those interested in his life, I highly recommend you checkout the film, Pope John Paul II starring Jon Voight. You can watch it on Amazon. For now, I want to highlight three of his encyclicals and how they impacted me.
On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering: Anniversary Edition.
Prior to taking the name John Paul II, he was known as Karol Józef Wojtyła and was a native of Poland. One of the prerequisites to write about suffering is to have suffered yourself. John Paul II certainly checks this box. Within a short period of time, he lost every family member to illness: first his mother, when he was just a boy, then his older brother to scarlet fever. Finally, as the Nazis began to invade Poland, he returned home to find his father, the man who most influenced his spiritual life, dead in their small apartment. As evil encroached on his homeland, he had lost all his family. Thus, when he writes the following, one knows that John Paul II must have, as the younger Karol Wojtyla, reflected on Christ’s prayer during those dark nights alone in the apartment as the sound of Nazi boots marching through the street echoed outside his window.
The words of that prayer of Christ in Gethsemane prove the truth of love through the truth of suffering. Christ’s words confirm with all simplicity this human truth of suffering, to its very depths: suffering is the undergoing of evil before which man shudders. He says: “Let it pass from me,” just as Christ says in Gethsemane.
— On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering, John Paul II.
While I love to study the Problem of Evil, I have found that John Paul’s encyclical on it is the most concise and profound writing on the subject for Christians. This is refreshing as most intellectual cases for the question “How could a good God allow suffering?” go something like this:
God is all powerful, all knowing, and all loving.
Evil exists.
An all powerful, all knowing, all loving God will have a good reason for allowing the evil, even if we don’t know what that reason is.
The intellectual discussion is more about justifying the reasons for trusting God despite evil, rather than claiming the answer for its existence. In On The Meaning of Human Suffering, John Paul II is not content with merely justifying belief in God. Instead, he takes you, to borrow a phrase from Aslan of Narnia, “further up, and further in” to the mysteries of “salvific suffering.”
John Paul II opens his teaching on the passage from Paul. In all my years as a Protestant, I cannot recall ever hearing a sermon preached about the importance of our suffering contributing to the salvation of the world. This is precisely what Paul says his suffering is for, the building up of the Church, the instrument through which salvation is found.
Because of Christ, suffering is no longer merely attached to the moral consequences of our actions, nor is it merely a freak accident that is only explained by the cliche “wrong place at the wrong time.” Instead, suffering has been redeemed by the cross of Christ. Its purpose is to convert those who have fallen away from the Church and bring them to salvation, but it also permits our suffering to participate in the salvific suffering of Christ, making up what is “lacking in the afflictions of Christ.” John Paul continues,
In the cross of Christ not only is the redemption accomplished through suffering, but also human suffering itself has been redeemed…
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 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.
— Ibid.
Why do good people suffer? Because of love of God and love of neighbor. Bad people suffer because of God’s love for them. Good people suffer because God wants us to participate in the redemption of the world. Christ calls us to pick up our cross and follow him. If it were not true that our suffering participates in Christ’s suffering, then we should obviously ask the question, “Well if you already suffered and died for our sins, why should I have to?”
Christ’s call to us is not merely an ascent to an idea. He calls us to a cross. We are to be crucified with Christ, because that is the road to salvation. The miracle of the cross is that imperfect beings not only become sanctified by their suffering, their suffering is used by God to lead others to the fullness of Christianity and the participation in the redemptive love of God. We become an instrument of redemption, something we could never become on our own nor without Christ’s sacrifice. It’s because of Christ’s sacrifice that our suffering has meaning, and not just a feel-good-all-dogs-go-to-heaven kind of meaning, but a substantial and eternal meaning where when we get to Heaven and our cross is no longer on our backs, we will see how God used it not just for our good, but for the good of his Church and those who have yet to darken her doors. But none of this means much if the Church is merely a group of people who agree on a series of interpretations of the Bible.
Next, I’ll discuss another encyclical that impacted my life, That They May Be One.
Until then. God bless, and keep thinking!
— DR.
My journey on the subject of suffering began about 50 years ago with Elizabeth Elliott, C.S. Lewis and a host of biographies which, of course, let to lots of time with OT stories, the Psalms and Paul's writings. It has been an interesting journey.
I've read a couple of articles on the life of Pope John Paul ll, especially his time in Poland where they tried to kill him a few times and he missed their attempts in what would pass as a true miracle. He was an amazing leader in Poland and the Communist needed him out of their way so that they could do their agenda. Interesting life indeed.
Also, Habakkuk chapter three is interesting. How will we live if our Lord and King chooses for us to lose everything that sustains our lives? Will we really serve the King of Glory if he allows, much like Job, for us to experience serious or total loss? That in it's self is an interesting journey.
Also, Phil chapter 2 raises the idea of doing everything without grumbling, or fault finding, or grumbling, or questioning, or doubting (Amplified Bible). Interesting journey that was for a few months and then years.
It has been in interesting journey these past 50 years.