Why All the Suffering

The soul: Dear God, why do people suffer, even if they did (or did not) sin? Jesus: My friend, look up at My Cross, into My Heart, & ask Me this again. ~~~~ Based on: "...Almost always the individual enters suffering with a typically human protest and with the question 'why.' He asks the meaning of his suffering and seeks an answer to this question on the human level. Certainly, he often puts this question to God... Furthermore, he cannot help noticing that the One to whom he puts the question is Himself suffering and wishes to answer him from the Cross, from the Heart of His own suffering... Man hears Christ's saving answer as he himself gradually becomes a sharer in the sufferings of Christ. The answer which comes through this sharing, by way of the interior encounter with the Master, is in itself something more than the mere abstract answer to the question about the meaning of suffering. For it is above all a call. It is a vocation. Christ does not explain in the abstract the reasons for suffering, but before all else He says, 'Follow me!... Take part through your suffering in this work of saving the world, a salvation achieved through My suffering! Through My Cross.' Gradually, as the individual takes up his cross, spiritually uniting himself to the Cross of Christ, the salvific meaning of suffering is revealed before him. He does not discover this meaning at his own human level, but at the level of the suffering of Christ... It is then that man finds in his suffering interior peace and even spiritual joy. Saint Paul speaks of such a joy in the Letter to the Colossians: 'I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake.' (Col. 1:24). A source of joy is found in the overcoming of the sense of the uselessness of suffering... This feeling not only consumes the person interiorly, but seems to make him a burden to others... The discovery of the salvific meaning of suffering in union with Christ transforms this depressing feeling. Faith in sharing in the suffering of Christ brings with it... the certainty that in the spiritual dimension of the work of Redemption he is serving, like Christ, the salvation of his brothers and sisters... This is the meaning of suffering... It is supernatural because it is rooted in the divine mystery of the Redemption of the world, and it is likewise deeply human, because in it the person discovers himself, his own humanity, his own dignity, his own mission." (Salvifici Deloris: Gospel of Suffering) Jesus loves you infinitely!!