Offer it up?

[Spiderman]

In 1917, Mary at Fatima asked three children if they would accept great suffering and offer it up to atone for sin, so that communists would receive the grace to convert, so that world war 1 would end and a second greater war be avoided, and so that sinners be saved from hell.

The children were promised a vision that a crowd of 70,000 people witnessed together on October 13 1917, many of the people in the crowd being atheists who wrote they saw the sun dance. Google "Miracle of the sun".

The children were imprisoned and threatened with death. They refused to say they were making it up. Two of them said the lady said they would go to heaven soon, and soon they died. It's hard to think it was only dishonest children with a wild imagination.

But back to the original point, their message was that suffering is a good thing. I can't help but love the idea of suffering being a good thing ,because face it, the world is full of suffering and we will all die. How great it would be to enjoy suffering by believing with 100% certainty it was a good thing, and find meaning in it by offering it up as a cross and meritorious offering to atone for sin and defeat the Devil's army and works?

The minor daily hardships, the annoying people, foul odors, and irritating jabs life throws at us....offer it up?

 

[Twilight Hue]

Ask their mother.

‘Miracle’ Statue of Fatima | Skeptical Inquirer

 

[Glaurung]

It is not so much that suffering is a "good thing" so much as it can work towards our sanctification by forcing us to deepen our reliance on God. It is no coincidence that our time of unprecedented material and technological wealth is also a time of unprecedented irreligion. Because when we're comfortable it is easy to forget our final end. When we're comfortable it is easy to forget that this life is but a probation to test our loyalty to God.

The most efficacious response to suffering then is not to flee from it at all costs or bemoan it as some sort of cosmic injustice, but to accept it as an opportunity to cling to God. We don't seek suffering for its own sake (again suffering is not a good thing) but we are to accept it as an inevitable part of living in this valley of tears.

Suffering exists because man sinned and lost original justice, but suffering is also a means not only to deepen our relationship with God but to make reparation for the sins that offend him. Sin always comes with a price and there's no question of avoiding the tab. The question is whether we pay it in this life or in the next.