How Suffering Can Draw Us Closer to God – Healing 2024

Summary

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To begin to embrace our crosses, we must invite God into them. Both terrible and small sufferings can help us grow in holiness. Our crosses are personalized to us, to help us grow in holiness.

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Reflective Study Guide Questions

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“But the woman came to him and did him homage, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’”

Mt. 15:25

1. One of the first things we must do in order to embrace our crosses is to invite God into them, to tell the Lord that we need Him there. How can you work on inviting the Lord to help you carry your crosses?

2. When we think of embracing our crosses, we can fall into the trap of a type of spiritual gaslighting or the thought that our suffering isn’t painful. This is not true, because suffering can be very horrible. What are the worst sufferings in your life right now?

3. Not all of our sufferings are large and obvious crosses. But even our small sufferings can be little crucifixions for us. What small sufferings in your life can you offer to God to help you grow closer to him?

4. Our crosses do not look like someone else’s crosses. Our sufferings are personalized for us, the exact crosses that will help us to grow best. How can knowing this change the way you look at your sufferings?

Text: How Suffering Can Draw Us Closer to God

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I’m Nell O’Leary. I’m so grateful that you are doing this Pray More Novenas Healing retreat. And our fourth part today is going to talk about how suffering can draw us closer to God and carrying your cross, and what carrying your cross looks like and how to endure caring a particularly heavy cross. So we bring all these things before our Lord as we start off in prayer today. 

Opening Prayer

In the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen. Heavenly Mother, Mary, we, your daughters and sons come before you with hearts burdened. We know you know how to carry cross, that you witnessed your son carrying his cross, and that you help us to carry ours each and every day. Please go before us, Mary, as the ultimate intercessor. Please take all of our burdens and our fears and our hopes before your son. Please be with us as we suffer. Please help us to see you as a mother even in our suffering. We ask all this in the name of your holy, precious son Jesus. Amen. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

Redemptive Suffering

So this is a particularly Catholic thing, kind of a uniquely Catholic thing. When we talk about suffering as being redemptive or unitive or, or intimate, usually suffering something we want to avoid, right? You’re not a person who seeks out suffering. I’m not a person who seeks out suffering. It’s not something we desire, I want to suffer more today. Let’s see where I can rock up the suffering points. And we certainly don’t get more points for seeking out and conquering more suffering. Instead, suffering is part of the human condition as we know. And an area in which I’ve walked specifically in suffering that I want to share with you guys is with one of our kiddos who was sick, very sick with a chronic illness, for quite a long period of time. So in thinking about carrying our cross, something that may resonate with you too, for me, the deepest sorrows and the deepest pain have been witnessing those I love and trying to be like a Simon of Cyrene and helping them carry their crosses.

Matthew 15:21-28

So I was looking at Matthew Fifteen, twenty one to twenty eight Let’s pray. Let’s pray with the scripture and see where it guides us about our lord’s healing, touch in our suffering, but also acutely in the suffering of those we love. “And behold, a Canaanite woman from that region came out and cried, have mercy on me, Lord son David. My daughter is severely possessed by a demon, but he did not answer her word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, send her away for she’s crying after us. He answered, I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But you came and knelt before him saying, Lord, help me. And he answered, it is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs. And she said, yes, Lord, did even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table? Then Jesus answered her, oh woman, great is your faith be it done for you as you desire? And her daughter was healed instantly.”

A Personal Encounter With Suffering

Her daughter was healed instantly. So it was the fall of 2022, and one of our children became very sick, had a series of infections, full body pain, had to withdraw, go on medical leave from school. And we had so much trouble getting to the bottom of it. Spent time at many specialists in many doctor’s offices, the emergency room, all the scans, all the tests. And what it turned out to be was something that we weren’t really expecting. But when we got that diagnosis, kind of walking along that path with our wonderful pediatrician, we realized that witnessing a year old suffering so badly could either go one of two ways in our family, because our other four children we’re witnessing this suffering too. Our other four children are walking along with their sibling who is so sick. It very much changed the dynamic of our family in a number of ways. So the two options in watching her daughter suffer so badly was to either become hard apart and despair. 

Why would God let this little girl suffer? Why would he allow her to be in so much physical pain and mental anguish because of the physical pain? Why, why would a good and loving God allow bad things happen to good people? This universal question. So if He is loving and if he’s good, this shouldn’t happen. Therefore, He’s neither loving nor good. So that’s one option. And the other option was, well, His ways and His will are mysterious and hidden. And this doesn’t make a lot of sense, and it’s extremely hard and it’s extremely dark. But if this is what’s happening in our family’s life, this is what happened to our daughter, we are going to pursue all of the things we can for her healing, for her, for her comfort. 

We’re not sitting here being like, well, you’re suffering so great. Racking up those graces, right? Then we turn ourselves over to God repeatedly again and again and again, and say, this is your will, Lord. Please help us to bear this cross. Please help us to find the answers we need. And in the darkness and in the silence, realizing he is more present in this darkness and in this silence than when everything was great, we’re this big happy family with all healthy kiddos. Just, you know, doing all the activities, running around all the violent lessons and making all the cross country meets and making sure all the big homework assignments are around. Hoo hoo, so tired at the end of the day, like, well, you don’t know tired until you’re caring for a child who’s very sick. It’s a different level of exhaustion for watching your loved one endure something that’s so life stopping. 

So, Lord, you are here in this. You are present in this. You are asking us to be transformed into you in this so much more so than being a clapping parent of the silence of a soccer game. And this realization only comes with God’s grace. Like I didn’t get there on my own because I’m so holy, I’m such a great person. New, not at all. To witness how suffering can draw us closer to God means first allowing Him to enlighten our minds and to do that. So a lot of our prayer is parents and a lot of prayer. 

Ultimately It’s God’s Will

I think for many people who are witnessing someone they love suffer, whether it’s a horrific divorce, a child custody battle, whether it’s financial distress, whether it’s the deterioration of their body due to a disease or an addiction. First step is simply saying like, Lord, we need you here. We don’t understand why you’re allowing this to happen, but we know that we need you even more than we did when things were good. We, we need you. And we ask you, and we invite you, and we desire for you to be here with us as we navigate this. And that invitation to Him is just cracking that door open in the acute times of suffering to see and to say, okay, this hard stuff’s going to bring us closer to you. 

So how do we let that happen? How do we actually embrace the cross? How do we kiss the cross? How do we learn to love the instrument of hardship that’s going to draw us closer to Him? So it’s helpful to think about this in terms of that big question, like, why did God let good things, bad things happen to good people to say, okay, so God, there we Catholics look at this in two different ways of God’s will. That’s his permissive will and His act will, and ultimately it’s all God’s will, like, all these things that befall us and all these things that He allows to befall us, whether it’s him being like, we’re going to have this one happen, or like, Ooh, I’m allowing that one to happen. It’s unfolding in front of us in our lives, and this is His will.

So there can be a lot of anger and a lot of frustration. I certainly spent many nights being like in true angry, uh, anguish at God. Like, why, why, why? And in the silence, the answer in my heart was draw close to me not that it doesn’t matter why, of course we’re working to the bottom of our medical problems, but the reason It doesn’t really matter. It wasn’t a punishment for something we had done. Or you are like, God’s going to teach us a lesson. It was, this is unfolding. So the why isn’t really the question I need to spend my energy on. It’s the invitation of allowing God to come in, like receiving Him and letting Him come in. So He both allows and plans for opportunities to draw closer to Him, to be transformed into and in and through Christ to be that deeper son and daughter that we are created to be. But I do think it’s important to just acknowledge how painful suffering is. And there shouldn’t be like a spiritual gaslighting that takes place like, oh, it’s all for your sanctification. It’s so great. No, it’s not great. 

Suffering is horrible. And watching those, especially those that we love, suffer is horrible. It’s very torturous, it’s very hard. And when you read the lives of the saints and you hear what they endured and what they went through, they’re not saying like, oh, everything was so great all the time. They’re saying like, this was so hard and the Lord was in it with me. This was so hard. And I chose to turn myself over again and again to God. So this Catholic notion of unitive, redemptive the intimacy of suffering, I get a lot of questions on this anytime I talk about suffering, and I’m certainly no theologian, but from my very non theologian basic understanding of reading and praying and consulting with all the wisdom of the church about these things is that we can be united with Christ on the road to calvary through our suffering. 

Suffering Puts Us On The Road To Calvary

So the suffering puts us on the road to calvary. We’re going toward our own crucifixion. We’re living on these mini crucifixions. And guys, these can be small and these can be big. I shared this story about my daughter, our daughter being very, very sick. There are many crucifixions to happen when you’re overlooked at work for praise on a project or for a promotion when you’ve been malign and gossiped and kind of cut out of a friendship circle when you’re witnessing your child not being accepted by their peers based on something that’s outside of their control. And you watch your friends all get married and have kids, and you’re desperately desiring this vocation to call for yourself. And it hasn’t happened yet. Like these are, these are big and little things. They all, they’re all suffering. They’re all crucifixions. God’s not like, that one’s not big enough. You shouldn’t be complaining. Don’t come to me with that one. Like, that one’s not going to draw you closer to me. It’s only the huge ones, the big deaths, the big explosions, all of it draws us closer to Him. 

So don’t gaslight yourself and don’t allow others to gaslight you by saying like, oh, it’s just okay. And it’s not that big of a deal if it’s hard for you and it’s painful for you and it’s painful for Christ, if you are suffering, He’s suffering alongside you. So there’s a union and a uniting of yourself with and alongside Him. And then the redemptive, you hear people say like, oh, redemptive suffering. Like, I don’t know what that means. Well, my simplified version of what that means is that our suffering can be added to Christ’s redemptive love. So we can contribute to His treasures of love. 

A Path to Intimacy With God

We turn our suffering over to Him and say, Lord, there are merits and graces that come from this hardship and I can’t see them and I can’t feel them, I can’t experience, but I want them to be united with your love, your love, which poured out your blood and your love all over the world and redeem the world. Here’s my, here’s my two cents to add to that pile, like the treasury of your love. Just throw mine in there, Lord. Just throw mine in there. Do with it what you will. And then this invitation to intimacy that happens here, think about when you love someone so much that you know what’s going on in their life, you know about their childhood stuff and you know about their day to day worries. And you know about their heartaches and their heartbreaks.

Gosh, how much closer you feel to them versus some of that, you know, where maybe you kind of observe. Could be on social media, it could be in the workplace, could be in a friendship group where you see their life unfolding, you hear about the highlights, kind of know what’s going on. What kind of intimacy do you have with that person? Probably not very much. And maybe they’re a person who doesn’t have a lot of hard stuff going on. They shouldn’t try to manufacture it for like a forced, forced vulnerability. Sometimes you do see that on social media where you think, gosh, this person’s sharing a lot and they’re kind of still in the process of it. And it seems almost to be like a exploitation of their own vulnerability. Maybe you should process that stuff with, you know, friends and loved ones and your counselor before kind of splaying it all over. For everybody to give you pity or dismay or like be involved. Doesn’t really matter though, because for you and for me, for how we want to be closer and closer and closer to our Lord, our intimate suffering, sharing it with Him is that bond, it’s trauma bonding. We’re sharing what’s going on with Jesus while it’s happening. And then the relationship gets closer and closer and closer. Just like those friends and loved ones that you can share the ups and the downs with. Even if it’s mostly ups, maybe have a pretty wonderful blessed life. You have a great outlook on your life. Still have ups and downs to be able to share that. That’s the intimacy of suffering, is to take it to Christ. Tell him about it. There’s nothing too small He doesn’t want to hear and conversation. There’s nothing too great that’s overwhelming for him. He wants all of us. So he wants all of our stories. So he wants all of our suffering too. 

Offer It Up

And if you grew up Catholic or if you’re around an older generation of Catholics, you might hear this phrase a lot. I certainly did as a child, offer it up, offer it up. And maybe that was kind of like a way to say, I’m so sorry you’re thirsty on our road trip. We’re not stopping for the Fifteenth time. Offer it up. Or maybe you felt like it was a term’s used kind of dismissively, but actually to offer it up, to offer up it. The ubiquitous it, the hardship, the suffering, the upsetness, the hurt feelings, the physical problem that you’re enduring, whatever it is that will cross to offer it up, to offer it back over. It’s a really beautiful way to be grateful that we’ve been given something to give back to him. 

We don’t just give him our best selves, like, oh, I’m all fixed up, God and ha, here I am. I’m ready to give the gift of myself back to you. And didn’t I do a good job with what you gave me ready to say like, here I am Lord, I’m ready to do your will. But gosh, I’m a real mess. Here I am as I actually am. I’m going to offer myself as a holocaust. I’m, I’m putting myself on the altar as a sacrifice to give myself back to you. And these sufferings that you’ve allowed me to have, that you’ve graced me with are ways that I can do that again and again and again. because right when things are easy and things are going really well, I mean, my prayer life definitely has to be more disciplined. because I don’t, I’m not crying out to the Lord is often when everything’s good, when I’m on my knees because everything’s hard. My prayer is definitely more, more authentic and and deeper for sure. 

So our cross doesn’t look like our neighbor’s cross doesn’t look like your cousin on Facebook’s cross, doesn’t look like your boss’s daughter’s cross like our cross and our suffering is personalized to, to us and for us because what we need to grow in holiness. It is, and that’s a mystery of watching. Like how could my daughter being so sick be a gift of a cross for me? Like what on earth? What a weird way of framing it and phrasing it. Like what did I need to grow in that God gave me this gift of suffering. 

Like, wow, I just, so many things, perspective. I took a hiatus from work really zeroed in on what my family actually needed instead of busying myself trips and about doing other things, kind of staying, staying in movement so that I didn’t have to be in stillness with Him. What else did I need? I need to learn like a deep level of compassion for a seemingly unfixable medical problem. I needed to learn to pay attention and to listen in the silence and in the stillness in a way I never would have if I hadn’t been kind of forced to, like my circumstances, not God, but my circumstances forced me to. So that suffering is the school of love for my family. 

And as our daughter continues to  improve in many ways, there are still reverberations of that suffering that I see in my other children. In some ways I see it in the ways that they’re still needing help and in other ways I see it in ways that they really grew in sympathy and compassion and, and patience and understanding that God meets us where we are and He gives us what we need for that moment. So, that our cross could help us draw closer to God does sound weird. I’ve experienced it and I hope that the crosses that you are carrying right now, big little in between all the sizes also teach you to turn to Him, to allow Him to draw you closer to Him through and in and with this suffering. 

The Resurrection Is Our Promise

So this big question of why suffering can really stand to disrupt our trust in God. Take that to Him. Tell him that’s how you’re feeling and that resurrection is our story. Like resurrection is our story. We are the Easter people and the resurrection is our promise. But along the way, when we look at Christ crucified, we have all these crucifixes, right? With the corpus like Jesus’ body on this cross. Our Christian brothers and sisters have the cross. They don’t have Jesus crucified on the cross. When you look at the crucifix and think, I Lord, if that’s where you are, why would I want to be anywhere else? If I desire so much to be with you, I start to be with you in heaven, in the resurrection. But I also along the way realize that being intimate and close with you Lord means being crucified. 

About Nell O’Leary

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