Pope John Paul 3: 1.3 Is The Suffering Good?

1.3 Is the suffering good?

Normally, suffering is considered as bad in the sense that if there is no suffering, the human life be better than the present situation. So suffering in human life, in itself gives a negative connation, because sufferings are evil in itself. And no one really and voluntarily accepts suffering. Here different kinds of opinions come from different people, because everyone takes the reality of suffering in a different way. But those who realize their own actions and takes efforts to change, suffering leads to betterment. “The fact of moral evil is basically explained as necessary for the greater good of free will. The range of moral evil is mainly explained by reference to the greater good of the responsibility.”

At the same time, suffering remains always a mystery to understand. But suffering could be understood when it is connected with redemption. For Aquinas, evil is the privation of good, as is seen above, there immediately arises the question whether is it absolute privation? If it is absolute privation how could it bring something good out of evil? Pope John Paul II says that evil is privation, but it becomes not as the total privation or total absence of good. He speaks theologically about suffering in the light of Passion and death of Christ, who transformed the meaning of suffering and brought good out of evil. The way in which evil things grow from the pure soil of good is a mystery for human beings. Pope gives an example of the parable of seed which is sowed in the field in the Gospel of Matthew 13:24-30. God allows them to grow together and on the last day, He will separate from each other. But never is the good destroyed by evil. The people who suffer sometimes become as a benefit in both the levels of human and spiritual point of view. This is because they accept sufferings in order to grow in their life. As we can see clearly in the lives of the saints, whatever sufferings come to them, they see and unite them with the suffering of Christ, who accepted the death on the cross. This co-existence of evil and suffering remain until the last days of our life. Pope John Paul II