Suffering - why me?

Despite the advances in modern medicine, as we live longer, so we are more likely to encounter pain and disability in one form or another. Chronic illness has always been with us, but in today’s world, where physical perfection is less an ideal than a goal, there is a pervading sense of uselessness among the chronically sick. Pia Matthews’ book presents a Christian understanding of suffering that does not seek to sanitise or to make light of it. Previous generations had seen illness as a result of sin. Christ’s ministry showed this to be untrue - God’s glory was and is revealed through healing of the sick.

 

 

But what of those who aren’t healed? Pia Matthews takes the lives of over a hundred saints and blesseds of the Church to show

how illness and disability can provide a doorway to sanctity. In nine chapters she covers different forms of disability, with examples from the saints.

 

The preface details the author’s own experience of caring for a severely disabled child. This book is surely the result of frequent meditation about the nature of disability and our response to it which goes beyond the ‘why me?’ that others perhaps expect:

 

“Each child is special, whether disabled or abled. ‘Specialness’ does not reduce children to the same. And in Catholic thinking, not only is every human being unique, every human being is also a gift. So for me, the ‘God, why me?’ question raises a much more interesting issue: not why did God pick on me to be the parent of a disabled child, but rather, from the perspective of the person with disabilities, why me, me as this gift. Then, unpicking the question further, not why was I born this way, but what is it that you, God, have in mind for me?” (p xv)

 

 

It is in precisely the understanding and accepting of God’s will, even when it involves suffering, which helps to make saints.

 

In the introduction we see how the Church determines sanctity in individuals and the long process involved. Holiness is the vocation of all of us, although the path to it is often not self-chosen. Most people would never choose to be sick or disabled and find their situation a cause of anguish and doubt. People do not become saints in spite of a disability or even because of it. Rather, the disability becomes an aspect of a life of heroic virtue. Disability cannot define a person, “the object is to demonstrate that all human beings, whatever their situation, need God’s grace to grow in holiness and the saints and blessed are witnesses to this activity of grace.” (p xxxv).