First, what is meant by “Salvific Suffering? Salvific suffering has the power to save us;  or the power to bring about salvation or redemption.

Doloris means grief or suffering. Dolor is often defined as sorrow, grief, misery or anguish.

The Apostle Paul says: “In my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church.”

These words seem to be found at the end of the long road that winds through the suffering which forms part of the history of man and which is illuminated by the Word of God. These words have as it were the value of a final discovery, which is accompanied by joy. For this reason Saint Paul writes: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake”. The joy comes from the discovery of the meaning of suffering, and this discovery, even if it is most personally shared in by Paul of Tarsus who wrote these words, is at the same time valid for others. The Apostle shares his own discovery and rejoices in it because of all those whom it can help—just as it helped him—to understand the salvific meaning of suffering.

The Prophecy of the salvific suffering is found in the Book of Isaiah. The last of chapter 52 and all of chapter 53 contain a description of  the Suffering Servant.  Despised and rejected by men, smitten and  afflicted by God, the Servant would bear the sin of many and make  intercession for the transgressors. Of course, this prophecy was  fulfilled when God sent His Son Jesus Christ to be crucified for our sins. Thus God would provide salvation for Israel, and for all mankind.

See Also:

Meditation: Connecting with The Suffering of Christ — Stations of the Cross

By El Greco, c. 1602

Salvifici Doloris

Letter of Pope John Paul II on the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering, 11 February 1984

What is suffering?

Even though in its subjective dimension, as a personal fact contained within man’s concrete and unrepeatable interior, suffering seems almost inexpressible and not transferable, perhaps at the same time nothing else requires as much as does suffering, in its “objective reality”, to be dealt with, meditated upon, and conceived as an explicit problem; and that therefore basic questions be asked about it and the answers sought. It is evident that it is not a question here merely of giving a description of suffering. There are other criteria which go beyond the sphere of description, and which we must introduce when we wish to penetrate the world of human suffering.

Medicine, as the science and also the art of healing, discovers in the vast field of human sufferings the best known area, the one identified with greater precision and relatively more counterbalanced by the methods of “reaction” (that is, the methods of therapy). Nonetheless, this is only one area. The field of human suffering is much wider, more varied, and multi-dimensional. Man suffers in different ways, ways not always considered by medicine, not even in its most advanced specializations. Suffering is something which is still wider than sickness, more complex and at the same time still more deeply rooted in humanity itself. A certain idea of this problem comes to us from the distinction between physical suffering and moral suffering. This distinction is based upon the double dimension of the human being and indicates the bodily and spiritual element as the immediate or direct subject of suffering. Insofar as the words “suffering” and “pain”, can, up to a certain degree, be used as synonyms, physical suffering is present when “the body is hurting” in some way, whereas moral suffering is “pain  of the soul”. In fact, it is a question of pain of a  spiritual nature, and not only of the  “psychological” dimension of pain which  accompanies both moral and physical suffering  The vastness and the many forms of moral  suffering are certainly no less in number than  the forms of physical suffering. But at the same  time, moral suffering seems as it were less  identified and less reachable by therapy.

Sacred Scripture is a great book about  suffering. Let us quote from the books of the  Old Testament a few examples of situations  which bear the signs of suffering, and above all  moral suffering: the danger of death(5), the death  of one’s own children(6) and, especially, the  death of the firstborn and only son(7); and then  too: the lack of offspring(8), nostalgia for the  homeland(9), persecution and hostility of the  environment(10), mockery and scorn of the one  who suffers(11), loneliness and abandonment(12); and again: the remorse of conscience(13), the difficulty of understanding why the wicked prosper and the just suffer(14), the unfaithfulness and ingratitude of friends and neighbors (15); and finally: the misfortunes of one’s own nation(16).

In treating the human person as a psychological and physical “whole”, the Old Testament often links “moral” sufferings with the pain of specific parts of the body: the bones(17), kidneys(18), liver(19), viscera(20), heart(21).  In fact one cannot deny that moral sufferings have a “physical” or somatic element, and that they are often reflected in the state of the entire organism.

It can be said that man suffers whenever he experiences any kind of evil. In the vocabulary of the Old Testament, suffering and evil are identified with each other.

The Scriptures had to be fulfilled. There were many messianic texts in the Old Testament which foreshadowed the sufferings of the future Anointed One of God. Among all these, particularly touching is the one which is commonly called the Fourth Song of the Suffering Servant, in the Book of Isaiah. The Prophet, who has rightly been called “the Fifth Evangelist”, presents in this Song an image of the sufferings of the Servant with a realism as acute as if he were seeing them with his own eyes: the eyes of the body and of the spirit. In the light of the verses of Isaiah, the Passion of Christ becomes almost more expressive and touching than in the descriptions of the Evangelists themselves. Behold, the true Man of Sorrows presents himself before us:

“He had no form or comeliness that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that made us whole, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all”(41).

The Song of the Suffering Servant contains a description in which it is possible, in a certain sense, to identify the stages of Christ’s Passion in their various details: the arrest, the humiliation, the blows, the spitting, the contempt for the prisoner, the unjust sentence, and then the scourging, the crowning with thorns and the mocking, the carrying of the Cross, the crucifixion and the agony.

Even more than this description of the Passion, what strikes us in the words of the Prophet is the depth of Christ’s sacrifice. Behold, He, though innocent, takes upon himself the sufferings of all people, because he takes upon himself the sins of all. “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all”: all human sin in its breadth and depth becomes the true cause of the Redeemer’s suffering. If the suffering “is measured” by the evil suffered, then the words of the Prophet enable us to understand the extent of this evil and suffering with which Christ burdened himself. It can be said that this is “substitutive” suffering; but above all it is “redemptive”. The Man of Sorrows of that prophecy is truly that “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”(42). In his suffering, sins are cancelled out precisely because he alone as the only-begotten Son could take them upon himself, accept them with that love for the Father which overcomes the evil of every sin; in a certain sense he annihilates this evil in the spiritual space of the relationship between God and humanity, and fills this space with good.

Here we touch upon the duality of nature of a single personal subject of redemptive suffering.

He who by his Passion and death on the Cross brings about the Redemption is the only-begotten Son whom God “gave”. And at the same time this Son who is consubstantial with the Father suffers as a man. His suffering has human dimensions; it also has unique in the history of humanity—a depth and intensity which, while being human, can also be an incomparable depth and intensity of suffering, insofar as the man who suffers is in person the only-begotten Son himself: ” God from God”. Therefore, only he—the only-begotten Son—is capable of embracing the measure of evil contained in the sin of man: in every sin and in “total” sin, according to the dimensions of the historical existence of humanity on earth.

18. It can be said that the above considerations now brings us directly to Gethsemane and Golgotha, where the Song of the Suffering Servant, contained in the Book of Isaiah, was fulfilled. But before going there, let us read the next verses of the Song, which give a prophetic anticipation of the Passion at Gethsemane and Golgotha. The Suffering Servant—and this in its turn is essential for an analysis of Christ’s Passion—takes on himself those sufferings which were spoken of, in a totally voluntary way:

“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth”(43).

Christ suffers voluntarily and suffers innocently. With his suffering he accepts that question which—posed by people many times—has been expressed, in a certain sense, in a radical way by the Book of Job. Christ, however, not only carries with himself the same question (and this in an even more radical way, for he is not only a man like Job but the only-begotten Son of God), but he also carries the greatest possible answer to this question. One can say that this answer emerges from the very master of which the question is made up. Christ gives the answer to the question about suffering and the meaning of suffering not only by his teaching, that is by the Good News, but most of all by his own suffering, which is integrated with this teaching of the Good News in an organic and indissoluble way. And this is the final, definitive word of this  teaching: “the word of the Cross”, as Saint Paul one day will say(44).

This “word of the Cross” completes with a definitive reality the image of the ancient prophecy. Many episodes, many discourses during Christ’s public teaching bear witness to the way in which from the beginning he accepts this suffering which is the will of the Father for the salvation of the world. However, the prayer in Gethsemane becomes a definitive point here. The words: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt”(45), and later: “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, thy will be done”(46), have a manifold eloquence. They prove the truth of that love which the only-begotten Son gives to the Father in his obedience. At the same time, they attest to the truth of his suffering. The words of that prayer of Christ in Gethsemane prove the truth of love through the truth of suffering. Christ’s words confirm with all simplicity this human truth of suffering, to its very depths: suffering is the undergoing of evil before which man shudders. He says: let it pass from me”, just as Christ says in Gethsemane.

His words also attest to this unique and incomparable depth and intensity of suffering which only the man who is the only-begotten Son could experience; they attest to that depth and intensity which the prophetic words quoted above in their own way help us to understand. Not of course completely (for this we would have to penetrate the divine-human mystery of the subject), but at least they help us to understand that difference (and at the same time the similarity) which exists between every possible form of human suffering and the suffering of the God-man. Gethsemane is the place where precisely this suffering, in all the truth expressed by the Prophet concerning the evil experienced in it, is revealed as it were definitively before the eyes of Christ’s soul.

Andrea Mantegna‘s Agony in the Garden, circa 1460, depicts Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane

After the words in Gethsemane come the words uttered on Golgotha, words which bear witness to this depth—unique in the history of the world—of the evil of the suffering experienced. When Christ says: “My God, My God, why have you abandoned me?”, his words are not only an expression of that abandonment which many times found expression in the Old Testament, especially in the Psalms and in particular in that Psalm 22 [21] from which come the words quoted(47).  One can say that these words on abandonment are born at the level of that inseparable union of the Son with the Father, and are born because the Father “laid on him the iniquity of us all”(48). They also foreshadow the words of Saint Paul: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin”(49). Together with this horrible weight, encompassing the “entire” evil of the turning away from God which is contained in sin, Christ, through the divine depth of his filial union with the Father, perceives in a humanly inexpressible way this suffering which is the separation, the rejection by the Father, the estrangement from God. But precisely through this suffering he accomplishes the Redemption, and can say as he breathes his last: “It is finished”(50).

Icon of Jesus being led to Golgotha, 16th century, Theophanes the Cretan (Stavronikita Monastery, Mount Athos).

One can also say that the Scripture has been fulfilled, that these words of the Song of the Suffering Servant have been definitively accomplished: “it was the will of the Lord to bruise him”(51). Human suffering has reached its culmination in the Passion of Christ. And at the same time it has entered into a completely new dimension and a new order: it has been linked to love, to that love of which Christ spoke to Nicodemus, to that love which creates good, drawing it out by means of suffering, just as the supreme good of the Redemption of the world was drawn from the Cross of Christ, and from that Cross constantly takes its beginning. The Cross of Christ has become a source from which flow rivers of living water (52).  In it we must also pose anew the question about the meaning of suffering, and read in it, to its very depths, the answer to this question.

On the Redemptive Suffering of Christ (abridged from sections 14-21)

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in    him should not perish but have eternal life.”[27] These words, spoken by Christ in    His conversation with Nicodemus, introduce us into the very heart of God’s salvific work.    They also express the very essence of Christian soteriology, that is, of the theology of    salvation. Salvation means liberation from evil, and for this reason it is closely bound    up with the problem of suffering. According to the words spoken to Nicodemus, God gives    His Son to “the world” to free men from evil, which bears within itself the    definitive and absolute perspective on suffering. At the same time, the very word    “gives” (“gave”) indicates that this liberation must be achieved by    the only begotten Son through His own suffering. And in this, love is manifested, the    infinite love both of that only-begotten Son and of the Father who for this reason    “gives” His Son. .This is love for man, love for the “world”: it is    salvific love.

The words quoted above from Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus refer to suffering in    its fundamental and definitive meaning. God gives His only-begotten Son so that man    “should not perish” and the meaning of these words “should not perish”  is precisely specified by the words that follow: “but have eternal life.”

Man “perishes” when he loses “eternal life.” The opposite of    salvation is not, therefore, only temporal suffering, any kind of suffering, but the    definitive suffering: the loss of eternal life, being rejected by God–damnation. The    only-begotten Son was given to humanity primarily to protect man against this definitive    evil and against definitive suffering. In His salvific mission, the Son must therefore    strike evil right at its transcendental roots from which it develops in human history.    These transcendental roots of evil are grounded in sin and death: for they are at the    basis of the loss of eternal life. The mission of the only begotten Son consists in    conquering sin and death. He conquers sin by His obedience unto death, and He overcomes    death by His resurrection.

As a result of Christ’s salvific work, man exists on earth with the hope of eternal    life and holiness. And even though the victory over sin and death achieved by Christ in    His cross and resurrection does not abolish temporal suffering from human life, nor free    from suffering the whole historical dimension of human existence, it nevertheless throws a    new light upon this dimension and upon every suffering; the light of salvation. This is    the light of the Gospel, that is, of the Good News. At the heart of this light is the    truth expounded in the conversation with Nicodemus: “For God so loved the world that    he gave his only Son.”[31] This truth radically changes the picture of man’s history    and his earthly situation: in spite of the sin that took root in this history both as an    original inheritance and as the “sin of the world” and as the sum of personal    sins, God the Father has loved the only-begotten Son, that is, He loves Him in a lasting    way; and then in time, precisely through this all-surpassing love, He “gives” this Son, that He may strike at the very roots of human evil and thus draw close in a    salvific way to the whole world of suffering in which man shares.

Christ goes towards His passion and death with full awareness of the mission that He has to fulfill precisely in this way. Precisely by means of this suffering He must bring    it about “that man should not perish, but have eternal life.” Precisely by means  of His cross He must strike at the roots of evil, planted in the history of man and in  human souls. Precisely by means of His cross He must accomplish the work of salvation.  This work, in the plan of eternal Love, has a redemptive character.

Christ goes toward His own suffering, aware of its saving power; He goes forward in obedience to the Father, but primarily He is united to the Father in this love with which    He has loved the world and man in the world. And for this reason St. Paul will write of    Christ: “He loved me and gave himself for me.”[40]

The Scriptures had to be fulfilled. There were many messianic texts in the Old    Testament which foreshadowed the sufferings of the future Anointed One of God. Among all    these, particularly touching is the one which is commonly called the Fourth song of the  Suffering servant, in the Book of Isaiah. The Song of the Suffering Servant contains a  description in which it is possible, in a certain sense, to identify the stages of    Christ’s passion in their various details: the arrest, the humiliation, the blows, the  spitting, the contempt for the prisoner, the unjust sentence, and then the scourging, the crowning with thorns and the mocking, the carrying of the cross. the crucifixion and the    agony.

Even more than this description of the passion, what strikes us in the words of the    prophet is the depth of Christ’s sacrifice. Behold, He, though innocent, takes upon    Himself the sufferings of all people, because He takes upon Himself the sins of all.    “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all”: all human sin in its breadth    and depth becomes the true cause of the Redeemer’s suffering. If the suffering “is    measured” by the evil suffered, then the words of the prophet enable us to understand    the extent of this evil and suffering with which Christ burdened Himself. It can be said    that this is “substitutive” suffering; but above all it is    “redemptive.” The Man of Sorrows of that prophecy is truly that “Lamb of  God who takes away the sin of the world.”[42] In His suffering, sins are canceled out    precisely because He alone as the only-begotten Son could take them upon Himself, accept    them with that love for the Father which overcomes the evil of every sin; in a certain    sense He annihilates this evil in the spiritual space of the relationship between God and humanity, and fills this space with good.

Here we touch upon the duality of nature of a single personal subject of redemptive suffering. He who by His passion and death on the cross brings about the Redemption is the    only-begotten Son whom God “gave.” And at the same time this Son who is    consubstantial with the Father suffers as a man. His suffering has human dimensions; it    also has unique in the history of humanity a depth and intensity which, while being human,    can also be an incomparable depth and intensity of suffering, insofar as the man who    suffers is in person the only-begotten Son Himself: “God from God.” Therefore,    only He–the only begotten Son–is capable of embracing the measure of evil contained in    the sin of man: in every sin and in “total” sin, according to the dimensions of    the historical existence of humanity on earth.

Christ suffers voluntarily and suffers innocently. With His suffering He gives the    answer to the question about suffering and the meaning of suffering not only by His    teaching, that is, by the Good News, but most of all by His own suffering, which is    integrated with this teaching of the Good News in an organic and indissoluble way. And    this is the final, definitive word of this teaching: “the word of the cross,” as    St. Paul one day will say.[44]

The prayer in Gethsemane becomes a definitive point here. The words: “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will,”[45] and later: “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your    will be done,”[46] have a manifold eloquence. They prove the truth of that love which    the only-begotten Son gives to the Father in His obedience. At the same time, they attest    to the truth of His suffering. The words of that prayer of Christ in Gethsemane prove the truth of love through the truth of suffering.

His words also attest to this unique and incomparable depth and intensity of suffering which only the man who is the only-begotten Son could experience; they attest to that depth and intensity which the prophetic words of Isaiah in their own way help us to    understand. Not of course completely (for this we would have to penetrate the divine-human    mystery of the subject), but at least they help us to understand that difference (and at    the same time the similarity) which exists between every possible form of human suffering    and the suffering of the God-man. Gethsemane is the place where precisely this suffering, in all the truth expressed by the prophet concerning the evil experienced in it, is revealed as it were definitively before the eyes of Christ’s soul.

After the words in Gethsemane come the words uttered on Golgotha, words which bear witness to this depth unique in the history of the world–of the evil of the suffering    experienced. When Christ says: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?”, His    words are not only an expression of that abandonment which many times found expression in the Old Testament, especially in the psalms and in particular in that Psalm 22(21) from    which come the words quoted.[47] One can say that these words on abandonment are born at    the level of that inseparable union of the Son with the Father, and are born because the Father “laid on him the iniquity of us all.”[48] They also foreshadow the words    of St. Paul: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin.”[49] Together    with this horrible weight, encompassing the “entire” evil of the turning away    from God which is contained in sin, Christ, through the divine depth of His filial union    with the Father, perceives in a humanly inexpressible way this suffering which us the    separation, the rejection by the Father, the estrangement from God. But precisely through    this suffering He accomplishes the Redemption, and can say as He breathes His last:    “It is finished.”[50]

In the cross of Christ not only is the Redemption accomplished through suffering, but    also human suffering itself has been redeemed. Christ without any fault of His own took on    Himself “the total evil of sin.” The experience of this evil determined the    incomparable extent of Christ’s suffering, which became the price of the Redemption. The    Song of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah speaks of this. In later times, the witnesses of    the New Covenant, sealed in the Blood of Christ, will speak of this. These are the words    of the Apostle Peter in his first letter: “You know that you were ransomed from the    futile ways inherited from your fathers, not with perishable things such as silver or    gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or    spot.”[55] And the Apostle Paul in the letter to the Galatians will say: “He    gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age,”[56] and in the    first letter to the Corinthians: “You were bought with a price. So glorify God in    your body.”[57]

With these and similar words the witnesses of the New Covenant speak of the greatness    of the Redemption, accomplished through the suffering of Christ. The Redeemer suffered in    place of man and for man. Every man has his own share in the Redemption. Each one is also    called to share in that suffering through which the Redemption was accomplished. He is    called to share in that suffering through which all human suffering has also been    redeemed. In bringing about the Redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human    suffering to the level of the Redemption. Thus each man, in his suffering, can also become    a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ.

This discovery caused St. Paul to write particularly strong words in the letter to the  Galatians: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ    who lives in me: and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God,    who loved me and gave himself for me.”[62] Faith enables the author of these words to know that love which led Christ to the cross. And if He loved us in this way, suffering    and dying, then with this suffering and death of His He lives in the one whom He loved in    this way; He lives in the man: in Paul. And living in him to the degree that Paul, conscious of this through faith, responds to His love with love–Christ also becomes in a    particular way united to the man, to Paul, through the cross. This union caused Paul to    write, in the same letter to the Galatians, other words as well, no less strong: “But    far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ by which the world    has been crucified to me, and I to the world.”[63]

The witnesses of the cross and resurrection were convinced that “through many  tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”[65] And Paul, writing to the    Thessalonians, says this: “We ourselves boast of you..for your steadfastness and    faith in all your persecutions and in the afflictions which you are enduring. This is  evidence of the righteous judgment of God, that you may be made worthy of the kingdom of    God, for which you are suffering.”[66] Thus to share in the sufferings of Christ is,    at the same time, to suffer for the kingdom of God. In the eyes of the just God, before    His judgment, those who share in the suffering of Christ become worthy of this kingdom.    Through their sufferings, in a certain sense they repay the infinite price of the passion    and death of Christ, which became the price of our Redemption: at this price the kingdom    of God has been consolidated anew in human history, becoming the definitive prospect of    man’s earthly existence. Christ has led us into this kingdom through His suffering. And also through suffering those surrounded by the mystery of Christ’s Redemption became    mature enough to enter this kingdom.

Excerpted and abridged from John Paul II’s letter on the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering, Salvifici doloris, 11 February 1984.

View the complete text of Salvifici Doloris from the EWTN Online Services ftp site.

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_
paul_ii/apost_letters/documents/hf
_jp-ii_apl_11021984_salvifici-doloris_en.html

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