At a Vacation Bible School-style summer mission this year, one of the teenage helpers asked me about sacrifices, as another sister had encouraged the children to look for opportunities to make sacrifices after the example of the Fatima children. The teenager asked me how our offering up sacrifices or suffering can lessen someone else’s suffering. I explained that it is not so much that our suffering takes away others’ suffering, but that our suffering, when united with that of Christ, can become redemptive.

Suffering is a part of life; it has been in the world and a part of the human condition since the Fall and is inescapable. Even our God-made-man, Jesus Christ, did not excuse Himself or His sinless mother from undergoing suffering.

Our world tells us that the way to deal with suffering is to do everything in our power to alleviate it, or at least to ignore its presence in our lives. Our culture suggests all sorts of means for comforting our suffering. One that particularly comes to mind is the attempt of so many to alleviate their loneliness through having hundreds or thousands of “friends” on social media, many of whom they may never even have met in person. And ultimately, this attempt to drown loneliness results instead in more loneliness, as deep and meaningful friendships fail to develop.

Despite all of the ways that our society tries to remove suffering from our lives, real comfort in times of suffering comes in a radically different way. When we turn in our moments of suffering to Christ, who did not forgo suffering Himself, He does not simply lift the difficulties from our shoulders. Rather, with an altogether unique and beautiful response, He comes underneath our cross with us, shares the weight of it, and remains with us on the road of suffering. In a way, He unites His cross with ours, as we unite ours with His. And it is through this incredibly intimate union with Our Lord that the suffering we experience is able to become redemptive, both for ourselves and for others. “It is never just for us,” one of my sisters used to tell me, referring to our woundedness and suffering. “It is always for someone else.” And I continue to notice the truth of this statement as I see the Lord use specific instances of suffering in my own life to shed a light on His presence at work though suffering in the lives of others.

While it sounds paradoxical, suffering can be an incredible blessing, a wonderful gift. This can only really be understood by someone who has walked the road of suffering with Our Lord, has recognized His hand at work expanding his or her soul’s capacity to love through it, and has been open to seeing firsthand the good that can come out of it for himself or herself and for others. While we should not seek out suffering in a masochistic way, when the suffering inevitable to life comes, we have a choice to make: Will we seek, in the pattern of the world, to drown out our sufferings? Or will we, following the example of Christ Himself, allow our suffering to be redemptive by recognizing His power and love at work in us even in the midst of it?

Sr. Mary Martha Becnel is a member of the Ann Arbor-based Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist.