When Jesus first passes by the Sea of Galilee, he invites Peter, and his brother Andrew, “Come, follow me” (see Matt 4:18–19).

The apostle Peter had to personalize his call to pick up the cross and follow Christ. His unique opportunity lies in the way in which he bears his burden.

No one can relieve him of his suffering or suffer in his place. He will have to acknowledge the fact that even in his suffering he is unique and alone in the universe. When a man finds that it is his destiny to suffer, he will to have accept his suffering as his task his single and unique task. In Man's Search for Meaning, a book based on his experience of imprisonment at Auschwitz and various subsidiary camps of Dachau, he writes, Viktor Frankl, an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist, spent three years in various concentration camps during World War II. What can make suffering more acute is when it is perceived that there is no meaning to it. Third, much courage, generosity, forgiveness, hope, and sacrifice arise from the world's sufferings and evils.įinally, Christ's Paschal Mystery shows how God draws out of the depths of evil the victory of the Risen Christ and his transforming love. Second, moral evil and much of human suffering come from man's abuse of his freedom in sin. The answers, given by the same Catechism, are both comforting and enlightening:įirst, much evil in the world, especially physical evil, results from the kind of limited universe in which we live. The Catechism for Filipino Catholics poses a much-asked question “If God is ‘Father’ and ‘Almighty,’ why does He allow so much evil and suffering?” ( Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines 1997, n. In number fifteen it states:Īnd 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. Pope Saint John Paul II wrote an apostolic letter called Salvifici doloris on the Christian meaning of human suffering.

Mass effect redemption summary