ASK FR BITAJU | KAIROS GLOBAL | NOVEMBER 2021

Author: Fr Bitaju

Q44. Why do innocent children have to suffer with terminal diseases such as cancer? What part of ‘God’s plan’ is this exactly?

Yours is a perennial question about the meaning and purpose of innocent suffering. Seeking to discover ‘God’s plan’ in such suffering is all the more difficult. One of the powerful answers is the address of Pope Francis on 29 May 2015, when he met with a group of gravely ill children and their families. The Pope admitted that it was a question that hounded him, Why do children suffer? ‘And there are no answers,’ he says. ‘I just look to God and ask, “But why?” And looking at the Cross, “Why is your Son there? Why?” It is the mystery of the Cross.’ He further said that Our Lady too did not understand and did not have an answer ‘when they handed down to her the dead body of her Son, covered with wounds, spat on, bloodied and soiled.’ Pope Francis encouraged them saying, ‘Do not be afraid to ask, even to challenge, the Lord, “Why?” May be no explanation will follow, but his fatherly gaze will give you the strength to go on … The only answer that he could give you will be, “My Son also suffered.”  … The most important thing is that gaze.  And your strength is there: the loving gaze of the Father.’

As St. John Paul II described in his apostolic letter on the Christian meaning of human suffering (Salvifici Doloris), ‘Christ does not answer directly and he does not answer in the abstract this human questioning about the meaning of suffering.’ He says that man hears the call to suffering by becoming a sharer in the sufferings of Christ, which occurs through an interior encounter with Christ. Therefore, above all it is a call, a vocation, whereby we hear him say, ‘Follow me!’ It is an invitation to take part in the saving work of Christ through our suffering. Thus, when an individual spiritually unites himself to the cross of Christ, by taking up his cross, the salvific meaning of suffering is revealed to him (Salvifici Doloris 26). 

In the Old Testament, Job’s question remains unanswered as he does not discover the reason why innocent people suffer. All that Job gets to realise is that suffering is part of God’s plan, that it has to be accepted as long as it lasts, and that the one who suffers is not abandoned by God. Job is an image of the suffering of an innocent and just man who bears it patiently and continues to seek mercy and forgiveness, which finds its fullest meaning in the New Testament. Thus, the words of St. Paul give an answer to the cry of Job: I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us (Romans 8:18).  

Let me make it clear that this answer is not intended to solve the age-old mystery of suffering but only shed some light to understand that there is meaning in suffering, a mysterious plan of God for our salvation.

YOUCAT 66 

Was it part of God’s plan for men to suffer and die? 

God does not want men to suffer and die. God’s original idea for man was paradise: life forever and peace between God and man and their environment, between man and woman. [374-379, 384, 400] 

Often we sense how life ought to be, how we ought to be, but in fact we do not live in peace with ourselves, act out of fear and uncontrolled emotions, and have lost the original harmony that man had with the world and ultimately with God. In Sacred Scripture the experience of this alienation is expressed in the story of the Fall. Because sin crept in, Adam and Eve had to leave paradise, in which they were in harmony with each other and with God. The toil of work, suffering, mortality, and the temptation to sin are signs of this loss of paradise.