Paul’s focus on suffering

The Apostle Paul speaks often about suffering: his own suffering, Christ’s, and the suffering of Christians as Christians. It is the ground of Christianity. For Pauline scholar Ann Jervis (2007) Paul specifies this understanding in his “first gospel”—1 Thessalonians—that accepting the gospel entails acceptance of suffering.

Questions arise. How exactly do holiness and suffering go together?

What kind of suffering?

Paul doesn’t specify suffering exactly. But it’s clearly not a result of sin. It’s not accidental. And Paul’s understanding of suffering is that it is proactive rather than reactive. It provides a productive solution to the problem of sin that is somehow necessary to God’s plan. That said, it is not something that believers should seek for its own sake.

Jervis explains that the type of suffering unique to Christians does not manifest itself in “martyr-like actions, grim perseverance, or a negative and self-focused disposition.”

Rather, Christian suffering is a dynamic, forward-moving activity. It will be recognized for its capacity to be as Christ is, to proclaim hope, to reach towards God’s promise of liberty. Christians suffering in this way will not complain but celebrate (boast), knowing that they are part of God’s work in this time by sharing in Christ’s work of suffering.

Meeting suffering in ministry

Engaging with suffering is at the heart of my work as a hospital chaplain. Through my reflective practice informed by Christian theology I have learned that the more I dare to venture into my own suffering, the more am I able to meet others in theirs. All the while trusting in the mystery that even in the very depths of the most tremendous suffering is also to be experienced somehow sometimes an indescribable sense of peace, trust, hope, and even joy, in the sense of feeling a deep connection to others and to what it means to be human and spiritual and aware at the same time of God’s present grace—God in all things.

As Jervis put it,

“Having our eyes open to this truth is important not only for the sheer value of being aware, but also because, by understanding the nature of the Christian life in regards to suffering, we should be able also to experience suffering’s companion—joy.”

The dangers the Thessalonians experience now, in other words, are experienced in the arena of God’s sanctifying activity. Their afflictions brew alongside joy (1:6) in the vast cauldron of God’s peace and love.

It’s here, in this awareness, opening myself to the depth and fullness of human experience, that I feel the rawness of Paul’s monumental theology of the cross “not emptied of its power” (1 Cor 1:17). And it shakes me, albeit momentarily, from the banal comfort of my complacency, my consumerism.

In its productive sense of human spiritual work to be done, I would say that suffering is thus part of the joy of the gospel that Pope Francis highlights so often, grounded in understanding, compassion, and, most of all, mercy, which is the very heart of his pontificate.

Jervis, A. (2007). At the Heart of the Gospel: Suffering in the Earliest Christian Message. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.