God and Suffering
There are many children neglected by their own parents. There are also many who became victims and many terrible things happened to them like drugs or prostitution…. Why is God allowing such things to happen, even if it is not the fault of the children? And why are there only very few people helping us?
Manila (2015)
Pope Francis
Why do children suffer so much?… When the heart is able to ask itself and cry, then we can understand. Jesus in the Gospel, he cried. He cried for his dead friend, he cried in his heart for the family that had lost its child, he cried when he saw the poor widow burying her son, he was moved to tears, to compassion, when he saw the crowds without a shepherd…. If you don’t learn how to cry, you can’t be good Christians.… Let us learn how to weep, as Glyzelle has shown us today. Let us not forget this lesson.
Manila
(2015)
Daniel Harrington S.J.
The Suffering Servant speaks for the people of God as a community of sufferers, when he finds a word of hope. The Lord God is my help. Evil and oppression could not overcome the power of hope…. Compassion is a beautiful word. It refers to the ability to share the sufferings of others, to make them our own, to alleviate them where possible and to show sympathy where necessary. In the biblical tradition, compassion is not just an emotion. Rather, compassion is rooted in the recognition that God’s people constitute a community of sufferers and that even in the midst of intense suffering God is present as our help.
From Why Do We Suffer (2000)
Elizabeth Johnson C.S.J.
There is in our history a barbarous excess of suffering, a violence and destructiveness so intense in quality and extensive in scope that it can only be named genuine evil…. Radical suffering afflicts millions of people the world over in intense and oppressive ways…. A God who is not in some way affected by such pain is not really worthy of human love and praise…. Wisdom participates in the suffering of the world and overcomes, inconceivably, from within through the power of love. The mystery of God is here in solidarity with those who suffer…. Against the background of the history of human injustice and suffering, the suffering God is the most productive and critical symbol for it cannot be uttered without human beings hearing the challenge to solidarity and hope.
From She Who Is (1992)
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