Hope Through Suffering:
Offer it Up
Emmaus Young Adult
BSC 1/11/2025
But that is not all we can boast about; we can boast about our
sufferings. These sufferings bring patience, as we know, and
patience brings perseverance, and perseverance brings hope,
and this hope is not deceptive, because the love of God has been
poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, which has been given
us (Romans 5:3-5).
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▪ Why?
▪ Why would an all-powerful God who
abhors evil make me suffer?
▪ Why would a God who professes to love
everyone personally, not distantly, allow
my loved ones to suffer so cruelly?
▪ Why would a good God withhold, or
seemingly take away, the objectively
good things I’ve worked or prayed for?
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• Greek – Roman culture: the world was created in chaos,
with jealous and angry warring gods who shed each
other’s blood. These gods haplessly created humanity in
the process, unleashing punishing suffering when
humans angered them or got in the way.
A perennial • Judeo–Christian: as the book of Genesis explains, the
issue… True God is not simply benevolent but pure love and
goodness itself. He chose to create an ordered world out
of chaos, a world that He repeatedly revealed as
incomparably good.
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… because creation comes forth from God’s goodness, it
shares in that goodness—“And God saw that it was good . .
. very good” — or God willed creation as a gift addressed
to man, an inheritance destined for and entrusted to him.
On many occasions the Church has had to defend the
goodness of creation, including that of the physical world.
(CCC 299)
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LOVE AND FREEDOM
▪ Because God is Love, however, He does not force us to love Him
in return, even though the choice to love Him is the best possible
decision (see CCC §231).
▪ True love requires freedom, so God gives us the option to accept
or reject Him. If God chose to “make” us love Him, it would be a
gross manipulation of freedom and, therefore, contrary to the
very definition of love.
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SELFISHNESS AND SLAVERY
▪ The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us clearly that “the
devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good
by God, but they became evil by their own doing” (CCC §391). In
choosing to cut themselves off from the freedom of God’s love,
the demons became enslaved to each other by hate.
▪ Enslaved by their own hate and suffering, the devil and his
demons want nothing more than to entrap humanity in this
anguish as well.
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A QUESTION OF CULPRITS
▪ Satan’s most devastating victory against humanity came in the moment we
call “the Fall”.
▪ In their fullness before the Fall, the first humans were truly God-like, hand-
crafted for a blissful, never-ending relationship with Love itself.
▪ Yet man and woman still had their own free choice to make: whether to accept
God’s goodness at His word or reject it.
▪ Man and woman became separated from God through their choice of sin, and
suffering entered the world. Suffering was born not through Almighty God but
through His creatures’ rebellion.
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A QUESTION OF CULPRITS
▪ In turn, humanity’s self-giving love was distorted into manipulation and selfish
use.
▪ God’s gift of everything good, true, and beautiful was perverted into all that is
sinful, deceptive, and appalling.
▪ Possibly the most tragic of all was that our trust in God became riddled with
doubt and self-reliance, and our desire for Him became diluted with desire for
everything except for Him.
▪ In this way, humanity was invited into every consequence of suffering down
through the ages, which would affect our bodies, souls, communities, and all of
creation around us. Suffering is the very absence of God’s love.
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HOPE FOR REDEMPTION
▪ The original desire for all that is truly good is still written in our hearts, so we
naturally rebel against the tyranny of suffering and attempt to eliminate it.
▪ In our fallen state, humanity has proved incapable of redeeming itself, despite
countless attempts at self-reform throughout the centuries. Only our Creator is
powerful and pure enough to save us from our enslavement to evil.
▪ So deep was God’s grief for our suffering that He sacrificed His only beloved
Son, Jesus Christ, to take our punishment upon Himself, conquer evil, and
restore our severed lifeline to everlasting life.
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HOPE FOR REDEMPTION
▪ Suffering itself originated through humanity’s rejection of
God…
▪ Satan eagerly capitalized upon this ruinous rejection to
become suffering’s greatest proponent..
▪ Human suffering is the tragic result of our fallen world— the
original sin we inherited and the actual sin we continue to
commit.
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A QUESTION OF UNJUST SUFFERING
While it’s a relief to know where suffering comes
from, the question of why remains. Even if God does
not actively will suffering, why does He allow it to
happen? If suffering is the result of original and
personal sin, why must bad things happen to good
people and vice versa?
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THE GREATEST MYSTERY OF ALL
▪ We firmly believe that God is master of the world and of its history. But
the ways of his providence are often unknown to us. Only at the end,
when our partial knowledge ceases, when we see God “face to face,”
will we fully know the ways by which—even through the dramas of evil
and sin—God has guided his creation to that definitive sabbath rest for
which he created heaven and earth (CCC §314).
▪ God invites us into an act of faith, trusting that He will derive good from
any suffering He allows even when we can’t observe a greater good or
understand the full reason behind suffering.
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AN ETERNAL PERSPECTIVE
▪ We often desire mere happiness while God desires our everlasting joy.
We want immediate relief; He wants our eternal satisfaction. We seek
shortcuts that lead to less; He seeks to sustain us in the waiting so we
can receive infinitely more.
▪ God knows when allowing a particular suffering might actually be
medicinal for our souls in the long run and how it might help us to reach
heaven. He sees the full picture of eternity and looks beyond our
obscured human vision so that we can be healed permanently—not just
temporarily.
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THE MEANING OF THE CROSS: HOW SUFFERING
BECOMES REDEMPTIVE
▪ Christ was not a minimalist in redemptive suffering, but a
maximalist. He willingly took on the worst possible death and
destruction so that the greatest possible life and redemption
might be born from His suffering.
▪ In the process of descending into the lowest state of
humanity, Christ’s divinity touched and sanctified every part
of human nature to elevate it to Himself (see CCC §518).
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MEANINGFUL SUFFERING
▪ Christ’s presence within suffering emptied suffering of its meaninglessness. He
transformed Satan’s agenda for our desecration into an opportunity to encounter the
sacred: Himself. Every suffering that the Enemy had appropriated for our destruction,
God filled with Himself and overturned for our redemption—up to and including the
ultimate suffering of death.
▪ “You came to the aid of mortal beings with Your divinity and even fashioned for us a
remedy out of mortality itself, that the cause of our downfall might become the means
of our salvation, through Christ our Lord… “ (Preface III)
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MEANINGFUL SUFFERING
▪ Suffering is, in itself, an experience of evil. But Christ has
made suffering the firmest basis of the definitive good,
namely the good of eternal salvation. By his suffering on the
Cross, Christ reached the very roots of evil, of sin and death.
He conquered the author of evil, Satan, and his permanent
rebellion against the Creator. (St John Paul II, SD §27)
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MANY CROSSES, ONE SAVIOR
▪ We do not glorify the cross of suffering itself, but the person of mercy and redemption
upon it, which gives the cross its redemptive power. There were countless crosses both
before and after the time of Christ, and only one led to resurrection, because it
contained the Author of Life.
▪ Like it or not (and most of us will not), we will all meet suffering in this life. Jesus told
us clearly that “in the world you have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have
overcome the world” (John 16:33). Sooner or later, we all must bear our proverbial
“cross” in this world.
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FRUITFUL, NOT FUTILE
▪ The Enemy’s goal is to make us ignorant of God’s presence within suffering or to
convince us to reject God’s help so that our suffering remains sterile.
▪ When we try to bear the cross on our own power, either through self-reliance or an
attempt to escape, we find ourselves too weak to bear up under its weight.
▪ Only Jesus can help us to fully embrace our cross, directing us toward heaven with
every step you must take under its weight.
▪ This is the reality of Christ’s redemptive Cross. There can be no resurrection without
first facing the cross, but with Christ, there is never a cross absent from resurrection.
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MY BODY, GIVEN FOR YOU
▪ We must remember that we have free will just as the angels did, and
God will not save us against our will.
▪ We must actively choose heaven through our everyday actions, our
fidelity to prayer, and our sincere attempts to follow God’s will above
our own, especially in times of suffering.
▪ This is why redemptive suffering, marked by the central self-denial of
taking up our cross, is such a valuable weapon against hell in the
spiritual journey.
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MY BODY, GIVEN FOR YOU
▪ Often it seems like we are suffering terribly, but in truth, it is far less than what we would
suffer if we were to experience the full damage of just one of our sins.
▪ Any suffering that we unite to Christ’s becomes powerfully medicinal for our sin-sick souls.
Even more, God is never outdone in generosity. When we offer Him a little bit of
anything—our time, our trust, our suffering, our love —He responds with abundance. He
doesn’t limit the fruits of our offerings to our own souls; He allows the redemption to
overflow to others too.
▪ “This is my body which is given for you,” Jesus told them. “Do this in remembrance of me”
(Luke 22:19). Christ shows us that His Cross wasn’t about Him. It was for others—you and
me. This means that our cross, united to Christ, is not just about us. Our cross is intended to
be for the good of others too.
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MY BODY GIVEN FOR YOU
As we unite our small cross to Christ’s redemptive Cross, every
difficulty becomes infused with divine life. Our small wounds of
suffering are grafted to His great ones. His Precious Blood
sanctifies us. His suffering purifies our suffering. His
redemption becomes our redemption. His lasting life gives us
new life that overflows for the sake of others. His love teaches
us how to love redemptively, paving the way to eternal life for
countless souls.
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REDEMPTIVE SUFFERING
▪ We are called to be co-redeemers: a divine mission..
▪ Redemptive suffering: a form of intercessory prayer.
▪ Intercessory prayer, or intercession, means praying to God for
the good of others. The Catechism tells us that “in
intercession, he who prays looks ‘not only to his own
interests, but also to the interests of others,’ even to the point
of praying for those who do him harm” (CCC §2635).
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REDEMPTIVE SUFFERING
▪ We are made for community, and offering our suffering as intercession is a
unique opportunity to help others in legitimately powerful ways (see CCC
§2815).
▪ Redemptive suffering draws us out of the isolation that often comes with our
pain and reconnects us with the Body of Christ
▪ Jesus Christ is the one and only Savior, and His overabundant sacrifice on the
Cross was more than sufficient in every way.
▪ He does not need our help one bit, but He desires our fumbling participation
because He loves us too much to leave us out of His work.
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CO-WORKERS IN THE VINEYARD
▪ This is a humbling reality, to be allowed to share in God’s divine work
whether we are aware of it or not. To be sure, it is far more fruitful for
our own souls and helpful to others when we seek to actively cooperate
in carrying out God’s work.
▪ Just as we become co-workers by sharing in God’s acts of creation, we
can become God’s co-workers by sharing in His all-powerful Act of
Redemption. When we allow Him into the pain of our suffering, we join
His work not simply as co-creators but also as co-redeemers.
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CO-WORKERS IN THE VINEYARD
▪ When we labor in the Lord’s vineyard for souls, He
invites us to unite our every suffering to His salvific
suffering on the Cross. In doing so, God allows us to
share in His redemptive process. Our suffering,
formerly empty, becomes full of Christ’s life.
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HOW TO “OFFER IT UP”
▪ How do we practically invite the Lord into our suffering so that it becomes
redemptive?
▪ We can simply say from the heart, Lord, I offer this suffering for . . . and name a person
or intention.
▪ We could also say, God I invite You into this suffering or I give this suffering to You.
Use it for good…
▪ We also aren’t limited to offering just your physical pain and suffering. We can offer
every other difficulty too: fear, loneliness, frustration, disappointment, grief, and hurt.
We can offer it for ourselves, another person, a group of people, or a particular
circumstance. If the suffering is ours to endure, then it is ours to offer to God for the
possibility of redemption.
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THE MORNING OFFERING
O Jesus, through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, I offer you my
prayers, works, joys, and sufferings of this day for all the
intentions of your Sacred Heart in union with the Holy Sacrifice
of the Mass throughout the world, for the salvation of souls,
the reparation of sins, the reunion of all Christians,
and in particular for the intentions of the Holy Father this
month…
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HEAVENLY HELPS IN SUFFERING
▪ Mother Mary ….
▪ Saints
▪ Angels
▪ Sacraments
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Sources:
Catechism of The Catholic Church, Ascension Edition.
Pope St John Paul II, Salvici Doloris, On The Meaning of
Suffering.
Megan Hjelmstad, Offer it Up: Discovering the Power and
Purpose of Redemptive Suffering, Emmaus Road Publishing.
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Thank you and God Bless!
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