WHY SUFFERING?
Last Sunday’s chat left us with a question which we will take up on Sunday January 27th’s chat: namely WHY SUFFERING?
This is a great mystery ameliorated only by the fact that Our Lord Himself suffered, and greatly.
St Francis de Sales offers advice about sadness, suffering and sorrow and some of its causes and our dispositions when assailed by them.
He says,
“There is then a sorrow or sadness according to God, which is employed either by sinners in penance, or by the good in compassion for the temporal miseries of their neighbours, or by the perfect in deploring, bemoaning and condoling the spiritual calamities of souls. For David, S. Peter, Magdalen, wept for their sins; Agar wept when she saw her son almost dead of thirst; Jeremias over the ruin of Jerusalem.”
He continues,
There is then also a sadness of this world, which likewise proceed from three causes. It comes sometimes from the infernal enemy, who by a thousand sad, melancholy and disturbing suggestion obscures the understanding, weakens the will, and troubles the whole soul.
Sadness sometimes also proceeds from one’s natural disposition,when the melancholy humour predominates in us: and this is not vicious in itself, yet our enemy makes great use of it to weave and prepare a thousand temptations in our souls. For as spiders scarcely ever spin their webs save when the weather is dull and the sky cloudy; so this malign spirit never finds as much facility in spreading the nets of hissuggestions in sweet, kindly and bright souls, as he has with the gloomy, sad and melancholy; for these he easily disturbs with vexations, suspicions, hatreds, murmurings, censures, envies, sloth and spiritual numbness.
Lastly, there is a sadness which the various accidents of life bring upon us. What manner of joy shall be to me, said Tobias, who sit in darkness, and see not the light of heaven Thus was Jacob sad on the news of the death of his Joseph, and David for that of his Absalom. Now this sadness is common to the good and the bad; but to the good it is moderated by acquiescence in and resignation to the will of God: as we see in Tobias, who gave thanks to the Divine Majesty for all the adversities which came upon him, and in Job, who blessed the name of the Lord for them, and in Daniel, who turned his griefs into songs of joy. As to worldlings, on the contrary, this sadness is an ordinary thing with them, and spreads out into regrets, despair, and deadness of soul.”
Finally, he suggests,
” The sorrow of the world worketh death, says the Apostle; we must,therefore, carefully avoid and banish it as much as we can.If it be from nature, we must repulse it by contradicting its movements, turning it aside by the practices suitable to that purpose, and using the remedies and way of life which physicians themselves may judge best. If it come from temptation, we must clearly open our mind to our spiritual father, who, will prescribe for us the method of overcoming it If it arise from circumstances, we will have recourse to the teaching of Book VIII.which states, in order to see how grateful tribulations are to the children of God, and how the greatness of our hopes for eternal life ought to make all the passing events of the temporal almost unworthy of thinking about.”
Source: Treatise on the Love of God, Book 11, Chapter 21, St Francis de Sales.