Is Suffering One of God’s Love Languages?
Years ago I read and appreciated Gary Chapman’s book, The Love Languages of God: How to Feel and Reflect Divine Love. Recently, I felt drawn to reread the book in order to deal with a troubling situation. I hoped it would be available as an audiobook–and it was–but under a new title: God Speaks Your Love Language: How to Experience and Express God’s Love. In this updated volume, Chapman clearly and vividly describes how God speaks fluently in all five love languages, including 1) Words of Affirmation, 2) Quality Time, 3) Gifts, 4) Acts of Service, and 5) Physical Touch. After I finished listening to the book, however, I wondered if God might have another Love Language in his toolbelt?
Could it be that suffering is God’s most eloquent love language?
Now, I have heard people claim that God never causes suffering. I beg to differ. I think God both gives and receives suffering as expressions of His love. Does this assertion bother you? Before you accuse me of calling God a masochist or a sadist, let me share this quote with you from Fr. Jean Baptiste Saint-Jure:
“We trust ourselves to a doctor because we suppose he knows his business. He orders an operation which involves cutting away part of our body and we accept it. We are grateful to him and pay him a large fee because we judge he would not act as he does unless the remedy were necessary, and we must rely on his skill. Yet we are unwilling to treat God in the same way! It looks as if we do not trust His wisdom and are afraid He cannot do His job properly. We allow ourselves to be operated on by a man who may easily make a mistake–a mistake which may cost us our life–and protest when God sets to work on us. If we could see all He sees we would unhesitatingly wish all He wishes.”
Now consider these two real-life examples from my own life of God speaking the love language of suffering:
One day when I took Holy Communion to a woman who was dying of metastasized ovarian cancer, she said to me, “I know why I have this cancer. It is God’s way of saving my soul.” Riveted on every word, I listened as she described her wayward life before cancer, and how the illness has brought her back to the Catholic faith. Despite her pain and discomfort, she was radiant with joy. She died within a few weeks, confident in the mercy of God.
Three years ago I suffered debilitating injuries in a car accident that caused me to have to use a walker for several months. At one point in the recuperation process, I pulled a muscle while reaching up to pull the chain to the overhead fan. Unable to support myself on the walker because of my sore shoulder, I cried out in anger to Our Lord, “I wanted to be independent!” What I heard distinctly in reply was, “I wanted to draw you closer.”
We all know of saints who were called to suffer deeply for the salvation of souls. Here are two of my favorites:
St. Padre Pio. Born in 1887 in Pietrelcina, Italy, Padre Pio bore the stigmata, the wounds of Christ. “His suffering was tremendous, but he bore it without complaining as he continued to give himself to those who needed him,” wrote biographer Renzo Allegri, who visited Padre Pio the year before the sainted monk died. “When he would lift his head and look around, his big eyes looked like they were burning, not from pain but from a goodness that he could not contain”(Man of Hope, 2000). Countless miracles and other graces have been attributed to Padre Pio, including bilocation and levitation, reading souls, enduring physical attacks from the devil. Padre Pio believed that suffering is a sign of God’s favor. “Take comfort because your suffering is in God’s will,” he wrote. Furthermore, Padre Pio stated that being “on” the cross with Jesus in our suffering is better than simply contemplating Jesus from a distance.
St. Faustina Kowalska. Another saint who was called to suffer for the salvation of souls was St. Faustina Kowalska. Charged with the mission to spread devotion to Divine mercy, St. Faustina suffered physically from advanced tuberculosis, as well as from rejection and humiliation from those who did not believe her vision of Jesus were real. In her diary, she wrote that Our Lord told her, “You are not living for yourself but for souls, and other souls will profit from your sufferings. Your prolonged suffering will give them the light and strength to accept My will“. (Diary 67) At the same time, He comforted and encouraged her: “Jesus looked at me kindly and said, ‘My daughter, do not be afraid of sufferings; I am with you.'” (Diary, 151). Later, she wrote, “Suffering is the greatest treasure on earth; it purifies the soul. In suffering, we learn who is our true friend” (Diary, 342). As her mission intensified, she reported, “Today the Lord said to me, ‘I have need of your sufferings to rescue souls.’ O my Jesus, do with me as You please. I did not have the courage to ask the Lord Jesus for greater sufferings, because I had suffered so much the night before that I would not have been able to bear a drop more than what Jesus Himself gave me” (Diary 1612).
For me, the ultimate example of suffering as God’s “love language” can be found in the passion and death of Our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. God’s willingness to sacrifice his own Son to redeem humankind from sin, offering forgiveness and eternal life to those who would be baptized and follow Jesus as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, shows God’s unconditional love for us.
I don’t pretend to be fluent in speaking or understanding the love language of suffering. But I have experienced first-hand that accepting God’s decision to “operate” on me–to use His “Divine scalpel” to remove sinful disease in my soul–leads to spiritual health, grace, and growth. Unlike the great saints, I still resist suffering and seek comfort instead. Perhaps in time I will learn to rely on God’s Providential care and to trust with peace that the surgical procedure He chooses is what’s best for me, even if it hurts.
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