Anne Lastman
In a recent TV interview, the Holy Father, His Holiness Pope Francis was asked “Why do children suffer?” “Why do innocent suffer?” and the Holy father with great humility said “I find no explanation for this. there is no answer” and he further added “hatred and destruction are in the hands of another who sowed evil in the world through envy” but His Holiness trusts God who is his father.
I too with humility would like to offer one of many possible answers for the suffering of innocents. It’s not definitive answer but one of many possible answers.
Today children suffer because woman (mother of all living) has changed her essence of the feminine. She has said no to her design and refuses her mandate to carry forward the future. Woman, in deciding against her feminine and embracing the feminist has had a need to reject what she was specifically created to do in order to accommodate a new design.
Woman’s reparation for sin of the garden was to bear children, but to bear them in pain, and as St Paul offers “she will be saved through childbearing” (1 Tim.2:15). A rejection of this mandate changes the whole structure of life and belief and understanding leading children and adults, indeed humans to suffer.
When we speak of children suffering, we are not only speaking about visible suffering. The cancer, accidents, abuse, rejection, murder (abortion) but violence against them beginning from their smallest being and most vulnerable, (in utero) to post birth and then throughout early life, and especially in their developmental stages where abuse, neglect, abandonment imprinted lead to a wounded adulthood.
A child who is neglected, abused, abandoned by his/her mother especially, feels a lifelong suffering. A lifelong sense of being “not good enough” “worthless” “so awful even my mother didn’t want me” Even, I “was not chosen” “many are called but few are chosen” (Mt. 22:14). I was not chosen.
An abandoned child grows and matures into a human being whose place in his/her universe is insecure and he/she is unable to learn how to live a full life as intended and in a place of belonging, and with a lack of understanding that he or she has a Father who loves them and who is trustworthy.
A child who is deeply wounded in childhood grows to believe that they can only live a half-life. Live a life of walking, or shuffling, towards future because of a memory of sufferings. This child’s psychology has been modelled on rejection, unwantedness and doesn’t know how to be different. This child seeks others who will also abuse and abandon because this is their normal. Parents who do not love, protect, teach, but abuse, don’t nurture but set up their child for suffering.
A child who is unable to find an internal essay on how to live, have friends, laugh, sing, rejoice and yes even at times cry, this child suffers greatly. The pointer for this child is set on “suffering”
It’s easy to look at a physically suffering child and feel deeply for the child, parents, siblings, family. This because it’s physical, visual and inspires support and empathy because we can see, we can feel, and perhaps even ask of God why? But to recognise a child who suffers in soul, spirit, essence, this is something different. This is not obvious, this requires one heart’s recognition by another heart calling for help, and living in a society which eschews depth, the signs are not read. Living in a society with five second sound bytes the call of a heart for help and rescue and love is inevitably not heard.
Yes, God does love the suffering child, suffering youth, followed by suffering adult. For God the spirit he imparted is the same on the day of conception to day of expiration. So, for Him suffering is recognised as same but He requires others to feel empathetic and carry out His work of healing the wounds. But most importantly, he requires “mother” to hear His voice and respond to the child he placed in her care. When this doesn’t happen, especially in one aspect, fifty million times per year, (abortion) then a society develops whose children suffer in all manner of ways beginning from conception to the end. Society decrees suffering for unwantedness
Today we have a society where an imprint has been left of millions upon millions of children who have been tortured, abused, neglected, unwanted, sold, bartered, traded and slaughtered. All manner of suffering is visited on the child.
The question most often asked when a child is seen suffering is “where is God in all of this?” and no answer seems possible because God as a Father also watched his son be abused, bartered, neglected, abandoned, tortured and finally killed. The mystery of suffering and death. The promised death in a certain garden eons ago. A certain death which was a word and meaning not understood at the time. A promised “thing” or suffering which came as a result of innocence being lost.
The suffering of a child, always an innocent, throughout the ages till today is a visible and continuing image of an innocent who also suffered unjustly those many years ago. The sufferings of a child bring before the eyes of the world a suffering which occurred not only 2000 years ago but eons ago with death sentence on parents followed by murder (violent murder) of one of the children.
Today, in our stillness and meditation we can understand that in observing suffering of the innocents we stand in solidarity and in the presence of and in supportive care with that one suffering of long ago when unjust suffering was imposed on one who could not defend himself. The beatings, scourging, crowning with pain, blood, and finally blessed death are the continued imagery of the innocent who also suffered unjustly and whose own society too remained silent while He died.
Throughout time, society has stood by and watched innocence suffer. Why? Because from the very beginning, innocence (Adam and Eve) “suffered violence at the instigation of another who sowed seeds of hatred and destruction. Who sowed evil in the world through envy” (Pope Francis)
Those two children of God were introduced to suffering and silence was heard throughout creation. When innocence died the template for suffering of human children, adults, was set in place in perpetuity and through this the creator remained silent. Why? Maybe because like Jesus before Pilate His creative hands were tied-He had given life and freedom of will and would not and could not revoke this.
Why does God remain silent in the face of children suffering? For the same reason He remained silent in the other garden, Gethsemane. He remained silent when an innocent on a wooden cross cried out “My God My God why have you abandoned me” (Mk 15:34) He remained silent for a whole three days and nights whilst innocence lay in dark of a tomb.
God’s mode of answer in the face of innocence and suffering is to remain silent. Why? Perhaps because sin and suffering are always committed in silence and because of a loss of trust in the Father which led to the violence and suffering.
As a humanity we are tied to one another and if one hurts we all hurt, and with the pain of millions upon millions of crucified, abandoned abused, killed human beings we have a veil of suffering enshrouding our world. Innocent suffering is never wasted or lost but remains as a reminder to us to remember love which suffered and died.
Today we are also present when an innocent suffers so that we, can in spirit, understand and be present not only in the sufferings of our own day but at that suffering of a time long ago when it was imposed on a non-rebellious but voluntary and compliant Innocent. Jesus. When we too turn our eyes from the suffering of the innocents of our day we too, as a society, act in the manner of those of many years ago when the Son of the “Woman” was made to suffer and was finally killed and that society also walked past without stopping. Empathy for the innocent of that day was missing as it is missing in our day when our innocents too are led to the slaughter.
Throughout time, society has stood by and watched innocence suffer. Why? Because from the very beginning “innocence” suffered violence at the instigation and hands of another and this imprint of sin and its fruit suffering, has continued and will continue throughout all time.
