It was Holy Thursday of 2022 when I got the heartbreaking news that my godson, Andre’, had passed away. His parents had gone to the hospital that morning expecting the normal delivery of a healthy baby boy, but it didn’t happen. He was gone. I had prayed for my godson daily during their pregnancy, begging God for his health and that his parents would experience the joys of having a son. As I headed to the hospital to be with them, the question of “why” echoed continually in my heart. It didn’t make sense, and it wasn’t fair. That question only deepened as I held him in my arms: “God, you can raise the dead. Please do it,” I prayed repeatedly. The miracle I was hoping for never happened.
This was a Sacred Triduum unlike any I had ever experienced before. It was real, visceral, raw, and painful. My godson’s parents were living on their own Calvary, wrestling with the same questions I had, but at a depth that I couldn’t begin to comprehend. There were no words and no pious platitudes that could explain it all away. We were shaken in a way that forced us to face serious questions. “Is God really who He says He is if He can allow this to happen?”
Through the experience of continuing to grieve the loss of André, I have learned an important truth-- God is in the shaking caused by suffering. When faced with difficulties that seem like they are more than we can bear, several pivotal and defining “moments” are created for us. These are opportunities for real, deep, lasting, and transformative grace, but we must choose to engage them. Suffering and pain are realities of living in a fallen world, but we still have the capacity and, yes, the freedom to choose to engage the painful realities of our lives as moments of grace. In these moments, we can trust that God is doing something. The question is-- what is He doing?
Often God allows this shaking because we need to be aware of our faulty foundations. We build our lives and identities on people, ideas, and false notions, and at some point, this foundation will collapse along with everything built upon it. God allows suffering to shake our foundation to build us in the truth and to shore up the cracks and crevices left by our sins and the wounds inflicted upon us.
Sometimes God allows suffering because we must face the deepest questions in the human heart. If we are honest with ourselves, we will find that we all expend a lot of energy running away from deep thoughts. With a world of distractions constantly at our fingertips, this running has gotten easier but the questions around meaning, purpose, God, and existence haven’t gone anywhere. We try to bury them, but at some point, they must come to the surface so that God can offer Himself as the one true answer.
At other times God wants us to exercise our trust and learn to trust beyond our capacity. This much trust requires that we reject all self-reliance and allow God to provide what we need in every moment and every circumstance. Suffering invites us to confront the places in our hearts that lack trust, and to throw ourselves in the arms of the God who gives us what we need.
Lastly, I have learned that God often allows suffering to forge intimacy with Him. There is a depth of intimacy between persons that can only be reached when faced with some type of suffering together. I often think of soldiers on the battlefield who endure tremendous suffering and hardship together who have formed an unbreakable bond. We must remember that we worship a God who has entered human suffering in a profoundly personal way in the person of Jesus Christ, and He entered your particular suffering in such a way that He takes it on Himself. God desires intimacy with us to a depth that we cannot fathom, and suffering is often a means of this intimacy, of forming a bond with us that cannot be easily broken.
We all deeply miss my godson, Andre’, and we wish he were here with us. The pain of his loss hasn’t disappeared in these last two years. However, with patient endurance and with the passing of some time something new has emerged: meaning. Andre is a gift and his short life continues to be a gift, and the painful wrestling in the wake of his passing is giving way to new life.