A question I have frequently been asked, when I visit someone in hospital, is, ‘Why has God done this to me?’ Sometimes they will add, ‘I never did anything wrong.’ I guess the second part is debatable, but many people wonder if sickness is a punishment from God. Jesus answers that question in this Gospel passage. The Apostles ask the same question, ‘Who sinned?’ In other words who is to blame for this. They are presuming someone did something wrong and so this is a punishment, but Jesus says that neither sinned, but in fact this sickness will serve a higher purpose. He says, ‘So that the works of God might be made visible through him.’
In this case the purpose it served was to bring people to faith. When the blind man was healed, he came to believe in Jesus and so did others because of the miracle they witnessed. The only people who didn’t come to faith, were the priests or Pharisees. They had a narrow understanding of how God worked, and if anything didn’t fit into those categories, they couldn’t be from God. In this case the only thing they could see was that Jesus supposedly broke the Sabbath, because he worked on the Sabbath. Sadly, even with an extraordinary miracle like this, they still weren’t open to the fact that maybe there is a bigger picture than what they could see. They were hardened of heart and so they were not open.
Remember the raising of Lazarus from the dead (See John 11)? When Jesus was told that Lazarus was sick, he waited another two days before he went to him. And Jesus said to the Apostles that his death would lead to God’s glory. Jesus deliberately waited so that Lazarus would die. It says that when Jesus got to the home of Martha and Mary, his sisters, Lazarus had already been dead for four days. And then Jesus raised him from the dead, which brought many people to believe in Jesus. His sickness and even death, served a higher purpose. Before he died, I’m sure many people would say, what possible good could come from a persons death? What possible good could come from the torture and killing of an innocent man? And yet it changed everything and won us eternal life, but no one could see that at the time.
Sickness is part of the human condition, part of our fallen human nature, but sometimes God also uses it so serve a higher purpose. I have seen it many times where someone in a family has become sick, especially if it is a young person and how it has changed other members of the family. Sometimes it brings people to faith, sometimes it drives them away.
If God is good and all-powerful, then there wouldn’t be suffering in the world, therefore God could not exist. That is one of the common arguments against the existence of God. It is an understandable one, because the most difficult thing that most of us struggle with is the mystery of suffering. Suffering is there primarily because of Original Sin. When Adam and Eve rejected God, evil came into the world and suffering is part of that evil. Does God want us to suffer? No, but God allows suffering to be there because it can serve a higher purpose. We may never see that purpose in this life, but sometimes you can see the effect of suffering. People who suffer the most are usually the most compassionate. Even the word compassion, means ‘to suffer with.’ Yet today many people will say that compassion is to alleviate suffering, abortion, euthanasia. Jesus says, ‘Unless you pick up your cross and follow me, you cannot be my disciple.’ (Matt 16:24).
C. S. Lewis wrote, ‘Pain is God’s megaphone, to a deaf world.’ When we are in pain we begin to think differently and listen differently. It will often shake us out of the trivial, worldly things, that we get so caught up in. You know how an unexpected tragedy changes everything. Everything we thought was so important up to that point often becomes irrelevant. We start to think of the eternal things. What is the purpose of our life? What will happen when we die? And it is important that we do think about these things. The more we address these questions, the more we will be at peace about suffering, because we will see it differently.
A few years ago there was a tragedy somewhere in the mid-west, where a couple and their two children were all killed in a small plane crash. As it happened the parents of one of them lived in this parish. They weren’t Catholic, but I visited them just to express my sympathy. Not being Catholic I wasn’t sure how I would be received, but when I met them they were very grateful for the visit, but apart from that, their faith astounded me. Instead of wailing about why God would allow this, they knew it was a terrible tragedy, but they also believed those people were now with God, no longer suffering and they looked forward to seeing them when they died. It was so inspiring to hear them talk that way. They had incredible faith and more importantly, they could see the bigger picture. Our time on earth is short and sooner or later we will cross over ourselves.
Another aspect of this, is what we believe happens when we die. If we believe we will be with God in heaven, in unimaginable joy and contentment, with our loved ones, that changes everything. When we lose some, even through tragedy, it means that they have gone ahead of us, sooner than we expected. And even though it leaves terrible pain because of the separation, sooner or later we will also cross over and be with them again.
When people grow in their faith, the things of the world usually become less and less important. They realize what really matters and it often creates a longing to be with God. I know so many people like that, who long to be gone, because their faith has helped them to see what is important. If the life after this one is eternal, then the choices we make are extremely important, because they have eternal consequences. That is also why God spells out for us exactly what will lead us to him and what could separate us from him.
Also, when people we love die, we often tend to remain focused on the sufferings they went through before death. However, that is the wrong thing to focus on. If they are with God in heaven, then they are experiencing a fulfillment and happiness that we can only dream of for now. That is what we should focus on. Otherwise it would be like focusing on sickness that we have gone through in the past, when we are now completely healthy again.
Suffering will always be a mysterious thing for us and I think we will always struggle to understand it, but that is where our faith is so important. That is why Jesus helps us to make sense of it. If suffering was what changed the course of history, through the death and resurrection of Jesus, then it must be extremely powerful from a spiritual point of view. Padre Pio said that if we understood the power of suffering, we would pray for it. So when you are suffering, keep offering everything to God, for the people and situations you are praying for. It is the greatest thing that we can offer to God.
When your children seem to have lost their way, or when there are problems within your family, offer the suffering that it causes you, for them. It is a way of turning it around from a spiritual point of view. And when we offer our suffering to God, God multiplies the generosity of our gift, far beyond what we could ever imagine.
‘Rabbi, who sinned? This man or his parents?
Jesus replied, ‘Neither he nor his parents sinned. It is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.’
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