Talking to God about our suffering helps us to listen. It grows our ability to hear the heart of Jesus. There are some things that I am not yet ready to hear, so my conversations with God are still very one sided, but I am getting better. One thing I have stopped doing is asking God to take me out of my situation and I have started asking him to come into it! That was a huge shift in attitude for me and to my surprise it makes the difficulties a lot more interesting and purposeful.

How can we help build others goodness without making them feel condemned? Sympathy is recognising someones plight. Empathy is being able to put yourself in their shoes, and compassion is a spiritual response to their need. People who have helped me the most, have often never known that their act of kindness by deed or word meant a lot to me. So I think prayer for the person is the foundation, and then using whatever gifts we have for that situation. We go out and source the loaves and fishes and even if it is not much we give them to Jesus and then do what he tells us.

2. I as a Christian feel confident to go to God through the Sacrament of Reconcilliation because He is Faithful and full of Love. I talk to him as a child talks to his father for something. I ask God to open my mind so as to see why I am suffering. I tell him just as Jesus told him “My Father, if this cup of suffering cannot be taken away from me unless I drink it, let your will be done” By obeying the laws given to us by the Lawgiver(God) we live nearer to goodness and thus avoid sin

Punishment sometimes rebuild goodness, when I was a child I used to steal petty things in the kitchen like sugar, when my mum notices it I was kinned and warned not to repeat the same. I thought mama does not love me but she was reshaping and rebuilding me to who I am today(a responsible person). As a Christian lets take the responsibility to bring those that have gone astray onboard even if it might cost us our reputation.

2. I feel very comfortable going to God with anything. I know He is strong enough to handle anything I can throw at Him. I also trust that He will never leave me. I believe that He knows me better than I know myself and is already aware of my reactions and feelings so being able to “go to Him” is pretty natural for me.

3. I find that the best way to help people rebuild their goodness is to acknowledge and affirm what I find good in them, even if it has nothing to do with the subject they are suffering over. They will come to sort out their “punishment” on their own. If I can help them find back their self worth the rest will follow. It is very easy for me to be encouraging to others.

1. I had the sense that I was not alone in having unpleasant thoughts by blaming God when things go wrong. I realize that I am among the evildoers and as stated in the reading: “Thank God that He loves everyone, even the evildoers.”

2. I have been speaking to God in regard to my suffering for quite a while. Actually, in an angry tone. I feel comfortable speaking to Him with my emotions, however, prior to this class and these readings, I felt deserted by God because nothing ever changed.

In reading Lesson 2, #10, I learned that God is listening and His answer is that I should turn to Him in humility and rely on His help because He is always there with open arms. He has not deserted me, but has a plan for me and my suffering.

3. This is a very sensitive situation. I have found that when people suffer they tend to build a wall around themselves, closing others out. It is difficult to reach them when their suffering is intense and they are questioning “why”?
I have a tendency to tell people that they need to trust God, but it is difficult to convince them at the moment.
I would hope that eventually, as their trust and closeness to God increases, they would be able to turn around their suffering to draw out their greatest qualities.
I now realize that through suffering one becomes stronger and closer to God.

This is the hardest one. I don’t know if there is just one pat answer. People respond differently, so I suppose I could only pray and ask God’s leading in this regard. Sometimes, perhaps, one can simply share how God did this in one’s own life. But it really depends on the other person. Sometimes, just loving a person with God’s love is all one can do.

Well, it is good, because I have always done that anyway. I mean, you can’t put on a show, or fool God anyhow. So the only sensible thing is to be honest. Since I was raised believing you can always talk to God, I suppose I never thought to do anything else. I think if I could not just be honest with God and be able to pour out my heart, then I would have a much more distant relationship with Him.

“Love is also the fullest source of the answer to the question of the meaning of suffering. This answer has been given by God to man in the Cross of Jesus Christ.”

Who can ever protest’”I do not deserve this!” while looking at the cross? He is the one who never ever sinned. Yet He suffered for us in His love for us. And to join in His suffering becomes a privilege, not a “punishment”, though it may be that too. The cross changes bitterness to hope. Not that I usually suffer without complaint! Far from it! But, at the end of the day, the cross is all that made it endurable. Maybe someday I will learn to count it all joy.

2. At times in my life I wondered why God allows suffering. The answer I get is because we live in a fallen world. What I mean is that Adam and Eve brought sin and suffering in this world when they ate of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This brought punishment from God. This perspective helps me to realize that God’s first plan was for us to live in paradise on earth in the Garden of Eden.

3. We can encourage others to have courage when suffering. We can be a friend to listen to how they feel. We can bless them by spending time with them comforting and encouraging them.

I’ve spent some time this year thinking about this.. the first sorrowful mystery is the Agony in the Garden, not Condemned in the Garden. How often do I first condemn myself or others, standing in judgment, yet we’re directed in the first sorrowful mystery to reflect on the Agony of Our Lord? If we focus and reflect on the “agony” one undergoes, we’re much more able to act in compassion, I think. Instead of thinking, “Oh, this person did such-and-such, and what a callous mean thing to do,” what if we turned that around and reflected on Christ’s Agony in the Garden? Would this meditation on Christ’s Agony help us to have compassion to the people we are apt to condemn? It becomes then, not so much about my agony(suffering), but Christ’s agony, and a way to become open to the “agony” of that person we have trouble with, through Christ Jesus. We’re then open to God’s Mercy, full of gentleness and compassion and incredible creative. In the movie Bella, for example, we have two brothers reconciling with the gift of a new kitchen pot. Now that’s funny–and creative. Of course there are some relationships that cannot be reconciled because of a person’s destructive behaviors or death. But the creativity does not stop in these cases, With our will, we can fervently pray blessings on those who hurt us, thus creating space/moments for God’s graces of healing in mercy.