The Teaching That Is Easily Misunderstood
Redemptive suffering is one of the most distinctive and most easily distorted teachings in the Catholic tradition. It is frequently used as a platitude — "offer it up" — in ways that can seem dismissive of real pain. And it is sometimes used as a reason to avoid seeking help that would genuinely reduce suffering.
This page is an attempt to state the teaching accurately and practically — especially for those who are grieving and wondering what their pain might mean, or whether it is supposed to mean anything at all.
What Redemptive Suffering Is
Redemptive suffering is rooted in two theological convictions:
1. Christ's suffering was uniquely redemptive. The suffering and death of Jesus were not meaningless — they accomplished the redemption of the world. This is at the heart of Christian faith. The Cross was the means by which God reconciled humanity to Himself (2 Corinthians 5:19).
2. Human suffering can be united to Christ's suffering. St. Paul writes: "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church" (Colossians 1:24). This is one of the most theologically dense and often misread verses in the New Testament.
Paul does not mean that Christ's sacrifice was insufficient. He means that the suffering of the members of the Body of Christ — when consciously united to Christ's sacrifice — participates in His ongoing work in the world. The person who suffers and offers that suffering to God is not suffering alone; they are suffering with Christ, and their suffering has a direction and a meaning it would not otherwise have.
What Redemptive Suffering Is Not
It is not a reason to avoid reducing suffering. The Church has never taught that seeking medical care, pain relief, counseling, or other forms of help is spiritually wrong. Reducing unnecessary suffering is consistent with the Catholic understanding of the body as sacred. St. John Paul II — who wrote the most comprehensive papal document on suffering (Salvifici Doloris, 1984) — received extensive medical treatment for his own conditions.
It is not a meaning imposed from outside by others. "Offer it up" said to someone in acute grief is almost always unhelpful. The offering of suffering to God is a personal, interior act of will — not a command that can be meaningfully given by others to shut down the expression of pain.
It is not a guarantee of meaning that makes the suffering feel different. Many people who consciously unite their suffering to Christ's do not feel any different as a result. The union is not primarily an emotional experience — it is a theological reality that holds even when it is not felt.
It does not make the suffering "good." Evil is still evil; loss is still loss. The Catholic tradition does not pretend that suffering is a good thing. It holds that God can bring good from it — which is a different claim.
What John Paul II Taught
The apostolic letter Salvifici Doloris (February 11, 1984 — the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, specifically chosen) is the most thorough treatment of suffering in papal teaching. Key points:
- Suffering is one of the most universal human experiences and the most profound mystery the human person faces
- The Book of Job represents the honest confrontation with suffering as a mystery that cannot be fully explained within human logic
- Christ's suffering is the definitive answer to the question of suffering — not an explanation, but a transformation. Christ entered suffering, and by entering it changed its character from within.
- Human suffering, united to Christ's, becomes a participation in the redemptive work — not independently redemptive, but truly participatory
- The proper response to suffering in others is compassionate action — the Good Samaritan — not passive acceptance of their condition as spiritually necessary
The Saints Who Practiced This
St. Thérèse of Lisieux deliberately offered the sufferings of her final illness — tuberculosis, spiritual darkness, severe physical pain — to God for the conversion of sinners and for priests. She described it not as feeling meaningful but as a choice made in faith.
Bl. Chiara Luce Badano (1971–1990) was a young Italian woman who developed bone cancer at 17. In a famous exchange, when told of her diagnosis, she reportedly said: "For you, Jesus." She offered each increment of suffering explicitly to Christ and spent her remaining time in remarkable interior peace. She was beatified in 2010.
St. John Paul II himself, in the final years of his life, lived his teaching publicly. Visibly declining from Parkinson's disease, he continued to appear publicly and to teach — and many observers reported that his suffering and the dignity with which he bore it were themselves a form of teaching.
How This Applies in Grief
Grief is a form of suffering. The Catholic tradition permits — not requires — the person who is grieving to make an interior act of offering their grief to God:
"Lord, I cannot make this grief smaller. But I can give it to You. Take what I am carrying and use it for whatever purposes You see that I cannot see. I trust that in Your hands it is not wasted."
This act does not reduce the grief. It does not produce an explanation for the loss. What it can do, over time, is give the grief a direction — a sense that what is being carried is not purely meaningless, that it is held within a larger economy of divine love that the person cannot yet fully see.
A Prayer for Those Offering Their Grief
Lord, I do not understand why this loss has happened. I cannot see any good in it from where I stand. I am not pretending otherwise. But I am making a choice: I am placing this grief — the weight of it, the anger in it, the unanswered questions in it — into Your hands. Do with it what You do with everything You receive: transform it. Use it for purposes I cannot see. And let the love I carry for the person I have lost be somehow — in ways I do not yet understand — part of the love that flows through the world toward its healing. Amen.
Sources Used on This Page
- Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 1500–1505 (suffering and illness), 618 (association with Christ's sacrifice)
- Sacred Scripture: Colossians 1:24; 2 Corinthians 5:19; Romans 8:17; 1 Peter 4:13 (RSV-CE)
- John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris (On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering), February 11, 1984
- St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Story of a Soul, Manuscript C (offering of suffering)
- Chiara Luce Badano: Chiara Luce: A Life Lived to the Full, Città Nuova, 2010
Related Guides
- Catholic Prayer for Grief — prayers for mourning
- How Catholics Grieve with Hope — the theology of Christian mourning
- Catholic Guidance for Grief After Losing a Loved One — the full guide
- Catholic Guidance for Pain and Suffering — the broader guide on suffering