God in Suffering

Father Joe Kempf, in his book No One Cries The Wrong Way:  Seeing God Through Tears (Copyright 2012, Our Sunday Visitor), deals with the issue of God and suffering.  In that book, he shares the following.




"The humble beauty of the presence of God with us in our suffering is illustrated for me by Solomon Rosenberg's story of his family's experience in one of the Nazi death camps.  This particular camp was a work camp-as long as a person could work they could escape the death chambers.  In the family of Solomon Rosenberg, the first to go were his aged parents who were well into their 80s, and who broke quickly under the inhuman conditions.


Solomon knew that the next to go in his family would probably be their younger son David, who was slightly physically disabled, and was able now to work less and less.  Each morning the family would be separated for their work assignments, and each night when they came back to huddle together in the barracks the father returned frightened-wondering whether this might be the day that David would be taken.  Each night, as he entered the barracks, his eyes quickly sought out his little boy David, his oldest boy Jacob, and his wife, the mother of his children.


Then came the night that he feared.  As he walked into the barracks, he could see none of his family and became frantic.  His eyes searched again for the precious faces of his family members.  Finally, he saw the figure of his oldest boy Jacob, hunched over and weeping in the corner.  He still could not see David or his wife.  He hurried to Jacob and said, "Son, tell me it isn't so.  Did they take David today?"  "Yes, Papa ," he said through his tears, "today they came to take David.  They said he could no longer do his work."  And Solomon could feel his heart break.  "But Mama, where is Mama?  She is still strong.  Surely, they wouldn't take Mama, too?"


Jacob looked at his father through his tears and said, "Papa, Papa.  When they came to take David, he was afraid, and he cried.  So Mama said to David, 'You don't have to be afraid, David.  I will go with you and hold you close.'"


And she did just that.  Jacob's mother went with her son to the gas chamber, holding him close so he wouldn't have to be afraid. 


I (Father Joe Kempf) am convinced that, together, they were held by God.  For that is the kind of God we have-one who does not cause our suffering, but rather embraces it with us.  At the very end of Matthew's Gospel, Jesus said, "And know that, I am with you always, until the end of the world."  There is no place we can go, no situation we could ever find ourselves in, that God is not already there filled with love for us, embracing our sufferings, weeping with us, and holding us close" (Pages 14-15).


Well stated!  Father Peter Schuster