“If we only knew the precious treasure hidden in infirmities, we would receive them with the same joy with which we receive the greatest benefits, and we would bear them without ever complaining or showing signs of weariness.”
St. Vincent dePaul
What is your initial response when you trip and fall, banging up your knees, elbows, and hands? What about when you discover you have a terminal illness or that your spouse had an affair?
Many years ago, when I was married and having marital issues, I recall a friend telling me to offer it up by saying 3 Hail Mary’s for the souls in purgatory. I honestly will admit that I didn’t understand what she meant, other than praying to bring peace to me. She would tell me that it would give me a space of peace and at the same time, help those in purgatory. In my mind, I would say, “ok, if you say so”. She knew and understood the Catholic faith more than I did, so I trusted what she said was true, even though I didn’t understand it.
Today I understand what she meant. She was teaching me a small lesson of redemptive suffering, offering my suffering up for the souls in purgatory.
Fr. Mike Schmitz explains suffering as Jesus extending a sliver of the cross to us to participate in His suffering that redeemed the whole world of sin. St John Paul II wrote in Salvifici Doloris “In bringing about the Redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the Redemption. Thus each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ.” In other words, we can be co-redeemers with Him when we unite our suffering to His.
Although Jesus bears the ultimate cross of redemptive suffering, He gives us the grace to participate in this redemptive suffering through our own crosses we carry.
Isaiah 53:4-6 ” he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
As I continue to grow in my faith, this puts a deeper perspective and meaning for me on the suffering I bear. Through the darkness and pain in my life, I have found my faith and it has revealed fruits of my suffering I couldn’t have imagined. As I navigate this Lenten season and reflect on redemptive suffering, a whole new perspective of suffering and alignment to salvation is revealed.
My sister passed away in October of 2024. She suffered greatly from many crosses she bore in her life, including addiction. She was searching her faith the months leading up to her death and evaluating people and events she needed to forgive and make peace with in her life. Because of my faith and the great hope it brings of a loving God and eternal life, my heart knows a peace that she is on her way to heaven. So I find myself, this season of Lent, offering my suffering for her soul to find rest in eternity with the knowledge that I will see her again someday.
I invite you this Lenten season to deepen your faith through uniting your suffering with Christ’s suffering.
“Man, discovering through faith the redemptive suffering of Christ, also discovers in it his own sufferings; he rediscovers them, through faith, enriched with a new content and new meaning… Those who share in Christ’s sufferings have before their eyes the Paschal Mystery of the Cross and Resurrection…In him God has confirmed his desire to act especially through suffering, which is man’s weakness and emptying of self, and he wishes to make his power known precisely in this weakness and emptying of self.”
St. John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris
Women Who Walk By Faith 
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