Summary
Though our first response in times of suffering might be to pray that God take it away, we can make great use of our sufferings by submitting ourselves to God’s will. We can unite our sufferings to Christ’s and offer them for a specific intention.
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Reflective Study Guide Questions
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church
Col. 1:24
1. Sr. Orianne reflects that our first response in times of suffering is often to pray that God takes the suffering away. Do you find yourself responding like this in times of suffering? How can you work on moving beyond this first instinct?
2. When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, He dreaded the suffering He was about to endure but still submitted Himself to the Father’s will. How can considering Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane influence your attitude toward suffering?
3. When we unite our sufferings to Christ, we can offer them for specific intentions such as a person we know who is suffering or a cause that is close to our heart. What might you offer your sufferings up for?
4. St. Paul referred to a certain suffering of his as a “thorn in the flesh.” Since he didn’t say what this suffering was, we can think of our own sufferings as we consider this Scripture passage. What sufferings of yours can you think of?
Text: Offering Up Our Sufferings & Uniting Them to the Cross
Hello, my name is Sister Orian Pietro Renee, I am a daughter of St. Paul and it’s an honor to be praying with you today. I am recording in one of the quietest rooms in our house, which is located on a very busy intersection.
So if you hear any noises from the traffic today, I would encourage you to take it as a sign to pray for all of the souls behind the wheels on the road today, rather than seeing it as a distraction. Today I wanted to talk a little bit with you about what it means to offer up our sufferings, to unite them to the cross of Christ.
This is a very difficult topic for many of us, and yet one that brings so much freedom. Before we begin, I would like to open with a prayer asking especially for the Lord, to give us listening hearts. Hearts that are courageous, that can stand in one place and listen in the midst of difficulty of pain. Perhaps even a fear hearts that are willing to receive him in all his goodness, in the midst of storms.
Opening Prayer
We pray in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord Jesus, give us hearts to love you. Form our hearts to be like your own. You did not, you did not hesitate to follow the father’s will in the midst of suffering. And your sacrifice brought so much joy and life to the whole world. Help us to love your heart and form your heart in our own. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
“Offer It Up”
You may have heard the expression before, “offer it up.” Maybe you haven’t, and it’s okay if you haven’t, but if you have, you may have been confused when you heard it. What does that actually mean other than just pull up your socks and march on? When we are faced with sufferings, when we are in the midst of wounds or in the midst of a struggle, our first instinct is to pray for it to be taken away.
That’s not a bad prayer. It’s not a bad prayer to pray for healing. If it is, the Lord’s will. It is not a bad prayer to ask for sufferings to go away. If it is, the Lord’s will, but at the same time, that does not mean that there is no meaning in the midst of our suffering, and it does not mean that the Lord is not present to us in the midst of that suffering.
When we look at the gospels, we can look especially at the account. Of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. This is probably, one of the readings that I find the most moving during Holy Week during the Easter season to see our Lord there fighting for his bride struggling, knowing that he will have to face tremendous suffering.
And one of his prayers is, “Father, if it is your will, let this cup be taken from me. If there’s any other way. But if it is your will that I drink this cup, then it is my will that I drink this cup.” I am very much paraphrasing that are, those are not the exact words of Jesus Christ, but if you go into your Bible and open it up and read through that passage, you will see that there is this real, very raw and vulnerable prayer by Jesus knowing that this is going to be a very difficult road, full and wrought with suffering.
That on a human level is going to be excruciating and will claim his life, and yet he does not ask to avoid this chalice if it is the will of the father that he drank it, and that is exactly what he did, and we know what the fruit of that sacrifice made for love of God and love of us was. He redeemed us on the cross, he redeemed us. He broke the gates of hell. He defeated death. In the midst of our suffering, we are not alone. We have a savior who suffered for us and who suffers with us. This is something that really seems like just all in our head until the rubber hits the road and we are in the midst of a suffering that we have been begging God to take away, and yet he has not.
In those moments, it can be very difficult to accept that somehow, somehow in some mysterious way, the Lord is permitting this. We may scream to the sky questions like, why are you not here? Where are you? You did it for them. Why won’t you do it for me? Or you did it for me? Why won’t you do it for them?
These questions can plague and haunt us, but they’re not the end of the story. How the Lord works good out of difficult situations is truly a mystery for us, but we see it happen all the time. Think of your favorite saint. And remember how much suffering they had in their life. If you have a favorite saint and are not familiar with the story of their life enough to know if they’re suffering, I would invite you to look it up today.
Looking Up to The Saints & Their Suffering
There is no saint in heaven who did not suffer. Whether we are going through physical suffering, mental suffering, emotional suffering, spiritual suffering, or are witnessing the suffering of another. I would like to offer you today this understanding of what it means to offer it up, because that does not mean pull up your socks man up and move on.
That’s not our faith. When we see Jesus struggling in the garden of Gethsemane, we then see him go to the cross, we see him complete. The exodus, if you will, from sin and death to life on the cross, his suffering, his death redeemed us. In the letters of St. Paul, we see him write one line that many people grapple with.
St. Paul says that I am making up in my body for what was lacking in the sufferings of Christ. Was anything lacking in the sufferings of Christ? No. Nothing was lacking in the sufferings of Christ except our participation. It is a tremendous and humbling truth, our faith, to know that when we suffer as someone baptized into the body of Christ, we can unite our suffering to the cross.
We can say a prayer telling Jesus exactly what is causing us anguish, if we can name it how much we are suffering, and ask him, Lord, if it is your will that I go through this. Help me to trust that you are with me. Help me to trust that you are carrying this burden with me, and take this suffering and unite it to your own on the cross. Take me as a small victim, as a small offering, and unite me to you on the cross. Make my suffering redemptive. He’s the only one who can make suffering redemptive.
When we pray this prayer, it changes everything. And I know that it very much can feel in a moment that it really is just in our head that it’s not impacting anything around us. But when we offer our sufferings up to the Lord and ask him to unite them to his cross and to make them redemptive, he does it. He does it. When we offer up our sufferings, we can offer them up for a specific intention. Something that is close to our hearts. For example, if you know someone in your life who is really struggling or who maybe needs Jesus in their life, you can offer your daily sufferings up for them, for that person.
Turning Your Suffering to Redemption
If there’s someone in the news who’s really been kind of like grading on you or bothering you, or who you feel is particularly lost and you’re worried about, you can offer your suffering up for them. If there is a cause that is so deeply on your heart, you can offer your suffering up for that. In this way, our suffering offered up to Jesus’ cross to be united there for the Lord, to make redemptive becomes a prayer, becomes a possible channel of grace for someone else in their life.
There is a reason that so many saints. Either asked for some type of suffering to be able to offer this up as a channel of grace for people or who rejoiced in their suffering. It’s mind boggling, and in many ways it’s uncomfortable to think about that people have actually asked for sufferings for this kind of reason.
Not that we should necessarily ask for suffering. That is a prayer that has to come from the Holy Spirit for a very special group of people. But we do see some saints do that. Why? Because somehow instinctually they felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to have something to offer to the cross, to offer to Jesus as a gift, to use as a channel of grace to make redemptive for other people.
We don’t need to ask for sufferings in our life. Life brings plenty of sufferings of its own, but when you are faced with those sufferings, like all of the saints who have gone before us, who asked for an opportunity for a gift of being able to offer something. To the Lord to make redemptive for others.
We do not need to be afraid or feel like we’ve been abandoned or feel like we have nothing to give, or that the Lord isn’t here in this with us, or that it’s all for naught because that’s a lie. It’s a lie we buy into. It’s a whispering that we turn our head towards and eat up when the Lord is standing right there with his hand extended pierced, for us.
The next time that you are going through a particular suffering, maybe it’s something chronic, maybe it’s something that happens once in a while. I would invite you to ask the Holy Spirit, is there a particular intention, a particular person, a particular need in the world that he is writing on your heart?
That he is asking you to unite this suffering to the cross for and to ask Jesus to make it redemptive, to make it a channel of grace for others. There are so many saint stories that can inspire us with an understanding of how effective this is, but I would like to point back one more time to St. Paul.
St. Paul’s Suffering
And in one of his letters, St. Paul actually says that there’s a thorn in his flesh, some type of suffering. We don’t know exactly what it is. Personally, I’m grateful that Paul never did tell us what it was, because it allows us to fill in the blank to put our own suffering in that place. He says that he has, he is suffering from a thorn in his flesh, and three times he begged the Lord to take it away.
And the Lord responded with “My grace, is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” And Paul goes on to say, well, I rejoice in my weakness. I rejoice in my sufferings, then I boast about that because the Lord is making them redemptive. The Lord is working miracles through our littleness, through our weakness. Yes, even through our suffering.
When we truly love someone. And we see them suffering. How often do we have this instinctual yearning or movement within us to say like, “I want to take that suffering onto myself. I would rather I suffer than they suffered.” That is exactly my brothers and my sisters, what the Lord did for us. He looked at us in our bondage to sin and said, I will take that on myself. So that I may die, that they may live, and then he resurrected and broke death, that we might be with him here now and for all eternity. In the midst of our suffering, he does not let us carry those burdens alone. And as hard as it may be to grapple with, we too, as the Holy Spirit forms Christ in us by virtue of our baptism, we too can look at the cross, can look at a crucifix and say, I do not want him to suffer alone. We can offer our sufferings to Christ as a point of unity and to ask him to make them redemptive for others.
To conclude, let’s say a prayer. Asking the Lord to take whatever suffering we’re grappling with today and to truly unite it to his cross so that he can make a redemptive. I’d like to give you a moment to think of whatever suffering it is that you would like to offer up during this time, and it’s okay if you’re still struggling with it. That doesn’t make the offering any less real. And perhaps it makes it even more real.
Closing Prayer
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Lord Jesus, there is something that I am really struggling with today.
I want to (name it here.)
You know how heavy this has been for me. You know how much it hurts,
but I know even if I don’t feel it, I know that you are with me in the midst of this.
And Jesus, I beg you, if it is your will, take this from me. If it is not your will that it be taken from me, then Lord, I beg you that you may use it to refine me, to purify me, to make me into the person you made me to be.
Lord, I ask you to take this suffering and to put it next to you on the cross. I offer you this suffering. To unite to your cross. And Lord, I beg you who died, for all of humanity, for the redemption of all of humanity, for love of me, take my suffering, unite it to yours, and make it redemptive in your mysterious will, in your mysterious ways that I trust, that I’ve seen at work, in my own life, and in the lives of others.
Use it to bring life to someone.
And at this moment, I would like to voice aloud a particular intention that I have. I will let you voice yours aloud if you don’t mind. I’ll keep mine quiet.
Jesus. I trust in you. Jesus. I trust in you. Jesus. I trust in you. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
About Sr Orianne Pietra René, fsp
Sr Orianne Pietra René, fsp, was born into a multi-cultural and multi-faith home, and converted to Catholicism at a young age. After years of ongoing little conversions of heart, she left a teaching career to enter the Daughters of St Paul, a community of religious sisters dedicated to proclaiming the Gospel through the most effective means of communication, as St Paul did. Sr Orianne’s greatest wish is for all people to find their healing, their belonging, and their joy in Christ!
You can follow her on Instagram here.