The writings of Paul express how he understood his afflictions and how he viewed suffering as a necessary way to be united with Christ and the Gospel. Read on to learn more about this paradoxical approach to pain.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that the human desire for happiness reflects his spiritual soul and has its source in an immaterial God (CCC 33). Christians do seek happiness and are promised by Jesus this reward through a life in the Spirit, a life in his service. However, happiness is often confused with pleasure, and thus the false assertion that happiness can endure suffering. True happiness is not summed up or ever finally satisfied in the temporal and material sensations that comprise pleasures. When man strives after pleasures, he seeks “personal comfort or utility” in creatures themselves, or other passing things at the expense of loving God and others. Turning inwards, man often runs from pain, for pleasure is its opposite. Pleasure altogether vanishes when man faces significant suffering. However, joy is another story (Pinckaers 76-78).
According to Servais Pinckaers, O.P., the experience of joy is actually born of trials. As opposed to pleasure, joy is an interior effect and is often the result of a long undertaking being completed, or a difficult concept being finally understood. Joy is the lasting happiness man thirsts for in his soul. Joy cannot be separated from the aspect of man's heart which longs for truth, goodness, and love (79). Joy comes with the acceptance and undertaking of sacrifice (78). After this acceptance, man realizes that even pleasure is not eradicated by the true happiness of joy, but refined so that it is no longer treated as an end apart from the good. To recap, suffering is incompatible with pleasure (which dissipates during the period of suffering), but true happiness is actually born from, endures through, and is strengthened by suffering.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ's sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we suffer. Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, you will also share in our comfort (2 Cor. 1:3-7, RSV).”
Paul describes here that through his sufferings, his flock is nourished. St. John Chrystostom goes so far as to say that Paul’s flock would be ruined if not for his afflictions (Chrysostom, Homily II 2 Cor 1:6-7). Paul describes that as he and his disciples suffer, they are united to Christ and receive his comforts. As Paul's flock shares in the sufferings of Paul through prayer, they receive also these comforts from Christ. Paul also writes that as he is afflicted in spreading the Gospel, they are afflicted in receiving it and holding fast to it. This suffering for the Gospel with Paul is integral to salvation, according to Chrysostom.
“But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you (2 Cor. 4:7-12, RSV).”
Paul propounds that through his human fragility and sufferings the glory of God shines forth, as he endures in Christ and makes present the sacrifice of Jesus. While contemporaries of Paul view troubles as being condemnations from God, Paul embraces them as confirmations in his relationship to God - “the badge of his apostolicity, evidence that the power of God rested upon him (Harris 342).” Paul may have also likened God's interventions from his perils as showing forth Jesus' resurrection in Paul’s body as God repeatedly lifts him out of near death experiences (Harris 343-345). St. John Chrysostom, in discussing Paul's identification with Jesus' passion quotes 2 Tim 2:11, “If we die with him, we shall also live with him (Chrysostom Homily IX 2Cor 4:8-9).” Paul realizes that Christ saves man when he accepts suffering and death in the love of Christ.
“Three times I begged the Lord about this, that it [the “thorn” in Paul's flesh] should leave me; but he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' I will all the more gladly boast of my weaknesses that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Cor 12: 8-10, RSV).”
Pope John Paul II acknowledges in his work, Salvifici Doloris, that these words comprise a “gospel paradox of weakness and strength (SD 23).” Chrysostom writes that as the calamities worsen, the grace of God is increased proportionally to satisfy Paul's needs. In fact, where affliction is met, consolation is given in addition to the aforementioned grace. Through affliction the soul is purified of sinful pride, listlessness, envy, lust, desire of riches, vanity, boastfulness, anger (Chrysostom Homily XXVI 2 Cor 12:8-9). In telling Paul that his grace is sufficient, the Lord informs Paul that divine power will bring him to completion. Through these challenges, Paul's very body becomes a lesson for his flock. Paul gladly stands out from others who would look down upon his adversities, for they do not understand the Source of his mysterious resilience.
Christ teaches his followers the paradox of embracing the hardships of life in the Beatitudes which “respond to the natural desire for happiness (CCC 1718).” Beatitude is inextricably linked with joy. “With beatitude, man enters into the glory of Christ and into the joy of the Trinitarian life (CCC 1721).” The Beatitudes that Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount are promises of happiness and blessedness. They promise that those who welcome suffering for the kingdom of heaven will inherit eternal joy.
Jesus sums up the Beatitudes in his last discourse with the apostles. “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends (John 15:10-14, RSV).”
This site focuses on the struggles that Paul undergoes in his ministry to spread the Gospel. He lists off a fair amount of these adversities in his second letter to the Corinthians. On the previous pages, we looked at how Paul was stoned, shipwrecked, imprisoned, and endured hunger, cold, exposure. Finally, we have discussed the value of suffering for Paul, and how the message of the Gospel is actually exemplified in his perseverance in distress.