Why does the Church so often renew before us the spectacles of innocent suffering, solemnly renewing the memory of those who suffered innocently? Why does Providence itself assist the Church in this? Why does it also set before us, so long and unceasingly, the spectacle of innocent suffering, wondrously preserving before us the incorrupt remains of those who suffered without guilt?
Why, holy child, purple-born in earthly life by royal blood, and purple-born in heavenly life by martyr's blood, do you still leave among us your severed members? Why do you make descendants eyewitnesses of how you suffered, doubtless not without the will of God, though it was by the will and action of men who had forgotten God?
I think I understand. Your destroyers offered you as a sorrowful sacrifice to lawless lust for power, for the ruin of lawful royal authority. God, wondrous in His judgments, permitted this, that by the iniquity of a nobleman He might convict and punish the sins of the people. Yet, that your pure blood might not be shed in vain, He kept it for its time. He commanded it, like Abel's blood, to cry out against rebels and usurpers of the royal crown. Thus He made you a sacred sacrifice, a lamb slain for the salvation of lawful royal authority.
Yet this is needed only for a time. Why, then, are we still called to be witnesses of innocent suffering accomplished more than two centuries ago? Why, according to the word of the Church, are “the relics of the martyrs sown openly throughout the whole universe”? Is it so that from them “the fruit of healings may spring forth,” as she also says? True. But why is the gift of healings granted to those who suffered innocently? Why is it sometimes granted to such as did not perform great feats of virtue, as with this blessed child? Why, I ask again, the gift of healings? Is it for the body alone, when the body itself exists not for itself, but for the soul?
As a many-knotted tangle is loosed by one end of the thread, so all these questions are resolved by one simple thought. God preserves and adorns with miraculous gifts the remains of those who suffered innocently. The Church, the keeper of the mysteries of God's ways and purposes, renews and glorifies their memory for this end: to accustom us to the thought of innocent suffering, and to make us ready to surrender our souls to it, if such be the will of God. It seems to me that on every martyr's tomb is written what the Apostle Peter wrote with Stephen, the Apostle James, and the other martyrs of the first Christian Church in mind: “Therefore let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to Him, as to a faithful Creator, while doing good.”
One must admit that it is not easy to become accustomed to the thought of innocent suffering. Against it, in a certain way, all nature rises up, both human nature and that of the other creatures of God. Since the one wise and all-good God created all things, all things were created in unity, arranged according to the law of order, and directed toward blessedness. But “God did not make death” (Wis 1:13). Therefore it is natural that nothing is inclined toward that which cuts unity apart, disturbs order, and turns away from blessedness. Thus every life loves to live and does not desire death. Every instrument of knowledge or sensation wishes to find its nourishment and joy in objects fitted to its constitution, not to suffer from things alien to its properties and destructive to its composition.
In man, besides the natural aversion to suffering, the sense of justice belonging to his higher nature rises against the thought of innocent suffering. If the sensory nature, by the principle of its constitution, requires that life enjoy safety, then the moral nature requires still more strongly that the innocent be safe. It requires this by the principle of freedom and God's righteousness impressed upon it. Therefore, as the sight of destruction makes the sensory nature shudder, so the sight of undeserved suffering brings the moral nature into a twofold trembling and confusion.
But here is the strangeness and contradiction of nature against itself. It must plunge the reflective man into hopeless despondency and desperate sorrow, unless he discovers a source of consolation and hope above nature. The same nature that inspires aversion and terror before suffering, especially innocent suffering, also proclaims that suffering, even innocent suffering, is unavoidable. Pass through all the ranks of visible creatures. Pass through all the regions of earthly nature. Where is there no suffering? What does not suffer? And does not that suffer more in which the marks of innocence are more visible? The lamb trembles before the wolf, and the gentle bird before the bird of prey. Stronger animals, sometimes by natural impulse and necessity, sometimes by circumstance, destroy the weaker. At times the more cunning destroy even the stronger. The best things among plants are torn and destroyed by animals, becoming their food. Every good, every joy, every pleasure in nature is bought, more or less dearly, by suffering. The grain must be torn apart and wholly perish, that a plant and fruit may be born. The feeling of love for offspring, a source of the liveliest joy in animal nature, is clearly mingled even in irrational creatures with anguish and cares. The pleasure of eating and being satisfied is almost proportionate to the preceding exhaustion of hunger. The sweetness of sleep is proportionate to the fatigue of wakefulness. In all the most beneficent powers of nature, sources of suffering and destruction are revealed. The sun warms, but it also burns with heat. Cold strengthens, but it also kills. Water irrigates, but it also floods. Wind refreshes, but it also brings diseases. The earth brings man bread, but demands his sweat. Man is born, lives, and dies likewise under the law of suffering. More than the other creatures, he is subject to this law. She who gives birth is in travail, and the one born cries. The dying man suffers, and those left after the dead weep. At the beginning of life, man suffers from lack of strength and from the imperfect development of his faculties. At the end of life, he suffers from the loss of strength and faculties. If there is any middle between these extremes, it is filled to overflowing with suffering, because man never finds his faculties and desires satisfied. And how many varied accidents there are: diseases, passions, insults from men, helpless poverty, burdensome wealth, oppressive subjection, disordered government. How many arrows, or more exactly, how many quivers filled with arrows, wound the human heart!
What a lot! One does not wish to suffer, yet one must suffer. It is unbearable, yet unavoidable.
What, then, is to be done? “It is hard,” says one reflective pagan, “but by patience that which cannot be changed is made lighter.” This example shows that even pagans acknowledged the need to accustom themselves to the thought of suffering, and even to readiness for innocent suffering. But the nations, “having no hope” (Eph 2:12), did not know the “patience” that “produces hope” (Rom 5:4). They taught desperate patience. “Suffer willingly,” they said, “otherwise you will suffer unwillingly.” Or, “Perish magnanimously, because all things perish. It is pleasant to fall beneath vast ruins.” Bitter consolations! As though a bitter cup could become sweet by being joined to a sea of the same bitterness, and by the thought that it cannot be less bitter. So little can man sweeten the cup of his destiny without the knowledge of Him who is “the consolation of Israel” and “the expectation of the nations” (Lk 2:25; Gen 49:10).
Only in true piety, in a word, only in Christianity, can one find the wondrous stone that turns dark iron into pure gold, bitterness into sweetness, evil into good, death into life, and suffering into blessedness. “Therefore let those who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls to Him, as to a faithful Creator.”
At the thought that we “suffer according to the will of God,” an unbeliever would be horrified and would murmur against the faithful Creator. But the believer, entering deeply into this thought, finds in it an abundant source of consolation that mingles sweetness with every bitterness. The approving and hope-giving thought of “the will of God,” of the will of “the faithful Creator,” reconciles the believer to the threatening thought of innocent “suffering.”
We suffer according to the will of God, according to the will of Him from whom “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above” (Jas 1:17). We suffer according to the will of Him who feeds the bird not worth an assarion, who clothes the grass of the field more splendidly than Solomon was clothed in all his glory. Through His Only-begotten Son He assures us that we, even we of little faith, are more precious to Him than any lily or sparrow. We suffer according to the will of Him who “makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Mt 5:45), and commands us to imitate the perfection of His mercy. How, then, could He who is the one Good, and from whom the one Good proceeds, will to place us in a state where there is nothing but evil? How could He who preserves the sparrow and the blade of grass fail to preserve man, even if He leads him through fire and water when He finds it needful? How could He who shows His mercy even to the evil fail to show even His justice to those who suffer innocently? If the Good One sends suffering, then certainly there is some good even in suffering. If our Merciful One and Nourisher “feeds us with the bread of tears and gives us tears to drink” (Ps 80:5), then surely there is need and benefit in preparing such food for us. So also men find it needful to join the sharpness of salt, sourness, or bitterness to the fatness or sweetness of ordinary food. If the infinitely Merciful One, even by infinite mercy, is not held back from making His people “see hard things” (Ps 60:3), then certainly He cannot permit this contrary to justice. Someone will say, “Then there should be no unjust and innocent suffering.” I do not know whether, in relation to God, there is any innocent suffering except the suffering of Him who “was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities” (Is 53:5). Apart from Him, “all have sinned” (Rom 5:12), and therefore all are liable to suffering. Together with guilty men, the creation subjected to them was unwillingly subjected to futility. Therefore it groans and suffers together with them, in hope of purification and deliverance together with them. Yet if there are those who suffer innocently in relation to themselves and their own deeds, God's justice and goodness are abundantly manifested toward them. They are manifested in God's wondrous and saving works, accomplished as recompense for innocent suffering. A tangible image of this is presented to us in the man born blind in the Gospel. If his blindness was a dark riddle in relation to punitive justice, “Did this man sin, or his parents, that he was born blind?” (Jn 9:2), then the riddle was fully resolved by recompensing justice: “Neither this man sinned, nor his parents, but that the works of God should be revealed in him” (Jn 9:3). Is it grievous not to see bodily light for several years, if in reward for this one beholds the spiritual and divine light that enlightens every man unto eternal life?
THEOSIS