Purpose Of Suffering Analysis

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3.3 The purpose and meaning of suffering according to John Paul II The question can be asked, is there always purpose and meaning in suffering? According to Pope John Paul II, the answer is yes, but only a few are able to recognize the purpose of sufferings. In God’s plan, nothing is allowed in this world without any purpose and meaning. As we read in the Book of Prophet Isaiah, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, […] so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” Since God is all powerful, only God can bring good out of evil. The human …show more content…
If man chooses the good to follow in his life, sufferings become the instruments of God in order to mature through his life experiences. According to Aquinas, it is possible only those who have faith in God to see the goodness in everything. “A person of faith to be someone who has committed herself to living a life like that of Christ, with the explicit recognition that such a life includes suffering for the sake of greater spiritual good.” A person of faith, even though he or she undergoes suffering involuntarily, accepts with patience and tries to surrender and experience the love of God. God allows sufferings to refine oneself and to realize the originality of their personhood. Sufferings are allowed by God, because He alone can bring goodness out of evil and because He alone can penetrate the soul of a human being. “Even where it is impossible to discern an educational value in the experience, God brings good out of the evil and suffering that he permits.” Thus only God can bring good out of suffering, allowing sufferings, since He Himself being the supreme …show more content…
Pope John Paul II says,
The very participation in Christ's suffering finds, […] a twofold dimension. If one becomes a sharer in the sufferings of Christ, this happens because Christ has opened his suffering to man, because he himself in his redemptive suffering has become, in a certain sense, a sharer in all human sufferings. Man, discovering through faith the redemptive suffering of Christ, also discovers in it his own sufferings; he rediscovers them, through faith, enriched with a new content and new meaning.
Because of faith, man participates in Christ’s suffering and it helps him to rediscover himself. Redemption which is achieved through suffering gives man hope to participate in Christ’s Paschal Mystery, because this is the only way to conquer and overcome evil in human life which leads to identify the dignity of

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