How vividly I recall the days when I was teaching philosophy in college and would delve into the big question: “Why does God allow suffering?” An atheist at the time, I found the question compelling, since from my perspective, the answer meant God did not exist.   

Too bad I didn’t realize the Catholic faith I had rejected could answer this question. In fact, every year during Holy Week, we confront the problem of suffering, as we walk with Jesus to Golgotha.   

When I was 25, my mother was diagnosed with cancer, and although I no longer really believed in God, I made a bargain anyway. “Cure her, and I will return to my faith.” Both she and my father died when I was 29, which hardened my heart completely against God. After all, there was no way a benevolent God would take my parents away from me.   

Returning to Catholicism years later, I found an answer to the question that had plagued me for years. My childhood image of God was a distant figure in the sky, eager to dole out punishment. But this picture did not fit Jesus, who was so compassionate that he wept at Lazarus’ tomb, even though he was going to bring this man back to life.   

Jesus took great pity on the widow, whose only son had died, by restoring life to this man too. He cherished children and gave hearing to the deaf and sight to the blind. He also made the ultimate sacrifice: “Greater love has no man than this, that one should lay down his life for his friends.”   

The fact that Jesus faced an agonizing and humiliating death shows us God is not distant from our suffering. If we are lonely, Jesus was too, when his friends fell asleep in the garden. If we feel abandoned, so did he, when he was arrested and “They all deserted him and fled.” If we have suffered physical and mental torment, he certainly did.   

Since God is love, it makes sense that he would not be remote from our pain. Gerald Vann writes: “When I share in the suffering of someone I love, that actual sharing is the expression of something deeper, something permanent: the will-to -share, which is what we call love.” This means that when my parents died, Jesus shared my sorrow. When I was diagnosed with cancer, he knew my suffering, and when my husband died, he grieved with me.   

When we look at the world today, we see destruction and devastation, violence and misery. These terrible conditions are impossible to understand when they are cut off from the Resurrection. Alice von Hildebrand writes: “From a supernatural point of view, there is nothing, absolutely nothing, which cannot be turned to God’s glory.”   

Had Christ’s story ended on the cross, it would have been a tragedy, but the sorrow of Good Friday leads to the joy of Easter Sunday. This means the sorrows of widowhood and cancer can become prayers when we put our suffering into God’s hands to help someone else.   

Christ is at every funeral, he weeps with the family at every burial. When a baby dies, he grieves with the parents. God became man to show his infinite love for us, and he rose from the dead to assure us of the glory awaiting us. There is comfort in realizing that death and suffering never have the final word.