Remember the scene in The Hobbit where Bilbo Baggins and Gollum spar with riddles? Well I have one for you. Here goes: It’s a great “vocational” school, but no one wants to go there. Still, like it or not, everyone’s enrolled. Some graduate with high honors; but some learn nothing. Those who do, earn great rewards? Have you figured it out? It’s the school of suffering.

Suffering is universal. Scratch the life of the happiest-looking family and you uncover suffering. When I think of our neighbors in Alexandria, VA, I recall the tragedies of so many families. Friends down the street had a son injured in a car accident. He was wheelchair-bound and severely brain injured. Neighbors on both sides and behind us all divorced. One wife moved to California where she later committed suicide. A friend I used to walk with, a retired general and devout Lutheran, grieved over his estranged daughter. A young dad whose children played with ours, lay down one afternoon feeling sick and died from a burst aneurism. So many tragedies; so much suffering.

In a recent meditation in Magnificat, Jennifer Hubbard, whose 6-year-old daughter, Violet, was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting in Connecticut wrote, “Yes, death and destruction, confusion and disappointment are the trials that mark this earthly journey and remind us that an enemy lurks.” But we are not alone, “his warriors [the angels] are in my midst....They sound the trumpet call and offer an assurance that we need not fear: pleas for protection are answered (Dn 10:12) and body and soul can be healed. (Tb 3:17)....His angel army assures me...that I am not forsaken, that I am covered with love beyond my own knowing.”

Sadly, many don’t experience that “love beyond... knowing” or see any purpose in suffering, because they do not know the Man of Sorrows. Neither do they know His Mother or His friends, the saints, or his messengers and helpers, the angels. To these poor souls, suffering proves that, if there is a God, He’s indifferent to His creatures or is helpless in the face of evil. They blame Him (or fate) failing to recognize that suffering is the natural consequence of sin inflicted on mankind by Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the garden and by our own personal sins. As many of the saints tell us, “Sin is the cause of all unhappiness.”

God is the wrong target of blame! Look in the mirror and find the culprit. Yes, the innocent suffer, but even their suffering occurs because we have unleashed the whirlwind by our sins. The innocent suffer with the guilty.

But what exactly is suffering? It’s more than pain. Animals feel pain, but they don’t suffer in the sense we’re discussing here. We’ve all experienced pain. If I stub my toe, it may hurt, but I wouldn’t describe that as suffering. Suffering is bigger than pain. Ven. Fr. John Hardon, S.J., in a retreat to the Handmaids of the Precious Blood called suffering a mystery and difficult to define: “As with all ultimates, [suffering]... cannot be finally defined. To “define” means that we can neatly summarize something in a well-rounded sentence by saying, “Suffering is…”....But suffering is much too deep, much too mysterious, to be contained in a mere definition.”

Father described the features of human suffering which “involve the whole person—body, spirit, and emotions.... It necessarily includes spiritual faculties.” Suffering can be physical, but also psychological and emotional, and some of the most intense suffering is spiritual. “[It] is in the innermost part of one’s being,” and differs from person to person. “Somehow the personality enters into and changes the very nature of each person’s suffering....as no two persons are identical, no one ever duplicates another person.” Father describes a “threshold of suffering” where “the least thing can trigger one person, while another person is thick skinned about almost everything.” He goes on to say, the source of suffering: “is not just words that people speak or experiences that we have, or some disease or sickness in the body. The source is often the circumstances in which the suffering occurs. So that in other circumstances the same thing could be borne with complete equanimity. It may be as simple a thing as the time of day, or the things that are on the mind when a further thing happens – and it’s enough to trigger a chain reaction of suffering.”

One of Fr. Hardon’s major points is that societal sin has consequences and a “sinful society is a suffering society.” Although he died in 2000, his words resonate today as we deal with a half century of child killing, rampant sexual immorality, and all the other capital sins as well. Wuhan virus, extreme weather events, terrorism – all resemble the punishments outlined in the Book of Revelation. As Fr. Hardon says, “Our country deserves [punishment], and you don’t have to be a Jeremiah to say that....Where society is sinful, God allows the laws of sin to take their effect.” The entire society suffers, the guilty along with the innocent. “It is part of the price of our human solidarity.”

The two purposes of suffering are expiation and sanctification, but to fulfill those purposes we must accept and offer ourselves in union with Christ. Only then can we “make up what’s lacking in the suffering of Christ.” What a strange saying! How can anything be lacking in Christ’s act of salvation? Only this -- our free will offering of our suffering in union with His as expiation for our own sins and those of others. Expiation allows us to help restore original justice shattered by the sin of Adam and Eve. Man alone, in his finite being, lacks the power to repair the sin against Almighty God! But by uniting our limited capacities to the infinite sacrifice of Christ, we can assist in the work of salvation.

Recall Mary’s message to the little children at Fatima. “Many souls,” she said, “go to hell because they have no one to pray for them.” God desires our participation as partners in the work of redemption. The first disciple of expiation is His own Mother, Our Lady of Sorrows, the mediatrix of all graces. But we too are called to help save souls for God through expiation.

The second purpose of suffering is sanctification. When it is accepted in a spirit of submission, it draws us into the Sacred Heart of Jesus. God doesn’t will our pain; He’s not a sadist. He wills the good He brings from our acceptance of it for a greater good. Suffering often turns souls to God. “There are no atheists in a foxhole,” the saying goes. The crucible of suffering invites conversion and sanctification.

Think of St. Ignatius of Loyola whose conversion began on a bed of suffering. Wounded at the Battle of Pamplona, he wanted something to read as he recovered at his parents’ home. He asked his sister-in-law, Magdalena, for novels on chivalry, but the only books in the castle were the Life of Christ and lives of the saints. We don’t know which saints Ignatius studied, but we do know that his reading stimulated a profound conversion. He repented of his past life and became a model of holiness, founding the Society of Jesus and developing the Spiritual Exercises which have influenced the lives of so many saints and continue to inspire so many today.

Every saint embraces Christ’s challenge to, “take up your cross and follow me.” St. Paul also says we are “heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if only we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom 8:17). Suffering, indeed, is the universal vocation; but some specially chosen individuals become victim souls called to say yes to physical and/or spiritual sufferings far beyond what is normal to the human condition. Our Lady is certainly preeminent among them! Their suffering is redemptive, not through their own merits, but through Christ’s. Acceptance of extreme suffering can help to convert the most hardened sinners. Victim souls rejoice and welcome the opportunity. God never forces a soul to take on extreme suffering; He invites and asks permission.

The life of Sr. Josefa Menendez shows the willing spirit of a victim soul. Born in Madrid in 1890 into a pious Catholic family, she entered the Society of the Sacred Heart, a French order, at the age of 29. A simple, reserved young woman, there was nothing about her to alert her fellow sisters to the extraordinary graces she was receiving from God, intimate conversations with Jesus and Mary. The first edition of her diary, The Way of Divine Love, written under obedience, was released in 1938 with the approval of Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli who was elected to the papacy a year later and took the name Pope Pius XII.

Jesus always chooses humble, little souls for His special favors and Sr. Josefa was no different. Like St. Therese of Lisieux, she followed the little way, offering all her humble works for the love of Christ. He affirmed her littleness saying, “Do not think that I make use of you because of your merits, but I want souls to realize how My Power makes use of poor and miserable instruments.”

Jesus, of course, is the sole mediator. What a mystery that He desires His creatures to join Him on the battlefield of expiation. On many occasions, Christ revealed His will for Sr. Josefa and invited her fiat. “I want you to be the victim of divine justice and the comfort of My Heart....Love, suffer, and obey....you will live in the most complete and profound obscurity, and as you are My chosen victim, you will suffer, and overwhelmed by suffering you will die. Seek neither rest nor alleviation; you will find none, for such is My will. But My love will sustain you, and never shall I fail you.... Are you willing?...Do not forget that your love is free.”

Sr. Josefa readily admits in her diary that her greatest defects were indecision and reluctance to respond to God’s graces in the face of so alarming a mission. But she did accept and became a great intercessor for souls even testifying to her transformation when she experienced, “an immense desire for suffering.” She wrote, “There was a time when the thought of it frightened me. When Jesus told me that He had chosen me as His victim my whole being trembled; but it is different now. There are days when I endure such agony that if He did not uphold me, I should die, for no part of me is free from pain!...In spite of this, my soul longs to bear more grievous afflictions for Him...if by do doing so I might console His Heart.”

One can almost hear the echo of Francisco of Fatima lamenting that, “Love is not loved!” embracing sacrifices to console the heart of Jesus. That was Josefa’s desire as well. One day while she was working in the Novitiate, Jesus appeared and showed her His heart pierced by thorns. “O my god,” she wrote, “what thorns!....they were very sharp and penetrated very deeply, and from each there flowed a great deal of blood....I should have liked to take them from Him. Then my heart was as it were torn with sharpest anguish and He placed it next His Own under the thorns. My heart was so small that only six of them pierced it....He knew that I longed for my heart to be bigger so that I might have freed His from more of the thorns.”

The children of Fatima received a brief glimpse of hell and the poor sinners falling into its depths like burning embers. Josefa, on the other hand, was taken to hell numerous times by the devil where all her senses were tormented by the agonies and screams of the damned. On one occasion she wrote that she was “dragged along a very dark and lengthy passage, and on all side resounded terrible cries. On opposite sides of the walls of this narrow corridor were niches out of which poured smoke, though with very little flame, and which emitted an intolerable stench. From these recesses came blaspheming voices uttering impure words. Some cursed their bodies, others their parents. Others, again reproached themselves with having refused grace, and not avoided what they knew to be sinful. It was a medley of confused screams of rage and despair....Opposite and beside me souls were blaspheming and cursing me.”

Why would God allow the devil to torment Sr. Josefa so? Because she responded with zeal, willing to suffer anything to rescue souls from hell. Once, she witnessed a diabolical battle over three sinners. Enraged, Satan howled to his demons, “Don’t let them escape...stand your ground... induce them to despair!” Sr. Josefa begged God for their deliverance and appealed to Our Lady. Despite Satan’s fury all three escaped and “were safe in the Heart of Jesus,” she wrote.

Sr. Josefa also experienced many visits from souls suffering in Purgatory begging for her intercession. Some were souls she helped save from hell. While Josefa didn’t know any of these individuals personally, she received the names of some of them and the dates and places of their death were independently verified.

Most of us will never be called on to experience the agony of a victim soul like Sr. Josefa, but none of us can escape the normal sufferings of life: death of loved ones, illnesses, broken relationships, even the petty sufferings of hurt feelings, misunderstandings, irritations, and neglect. How often we waste our sufferings, refusing to see them as the royal road of the cross that leads directly to heaven.

Suffering, accepted as a spiritual gift, a vocation in fact, can actually become a joy, as many saints testify. St. Therese of Lisieux said she preferred the vinegar of suffering to the honey of consolation. And what a privilege – to win souls for Christ without ever leaving home just by accepting the ordinary crosses of our daily lives. We all have them; we can’t escape them! What a loss, then, not to take advantage of them. St. Peter tells us, “Beloved, ...insomuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings, rejoice; that at the revelation of his glory also ye may rejoice with exceeding joy.” (1 Peter 4: 12-13)

On the day of judgment, when all tears are wiped away, our acts of suffering, embraced for love of Christ, will be the glittering jewels shaken, running over, and poured into our laps. Like a woman who cuddles her newborn, the suffering that preceded that joy will be forgotten. Let us then embrace the vocation of suffering and thank God for the great opportunity it offers for our own salvation and that of others. Remember: “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents....” May our willingness to suffer help bring that joy to fruition!