Suffering: What Every Catholic Should Know

Just as Job was tried, all of us are tested by suffering. It comes to us in many different forms: grief about the past, pain in the present, and sadness about what might have been. The personal dimension of suffering means that it marks our experience and, in some ways, makes us who we are.

Coping with suffering as Christians includes certain spiritual practices that lead us to surrender our lives more fully to the Lord. By offering our suffering as a spiritual sacrifice, joined intentionally to the suffering of Christ through prayer, we engage with the most profound Christian teaching about suffering: that it is redemptive. Suffering can transform us to be like God.

Mark Giszczak (Ph.D., Catholic University of America)is Professor of Sacred Scripture at the Augustine Institute Graduate School of Theology. His books include Wisdom of Solomon in the Catholic Commentary on Sacred Scripture, Light on the Dark Passages of Scripture and Bible Translation and the Making of the ESV Catholic Edition. He writes regularly on his blog, CatholicBibleStudent.com.