Faith in Suffering
“Today you will be with me in Paradise.”
In one of the most powerful moments in all of Scripture, as Jesus hung on the cross between two criminals, one of them turned to Him in faith and says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). These words, the great ache of this plea, this cry of desperation echoes atop the hill of Calvary. And then Jesus responds with one of the most tender and loving promises ever spoken, “Today you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43).
These words reveal something perfectly profound about our Christian life. Salvation was promised not in comfort, not in success, not in earthly triumph—but in the midst of suffering. Dismas encountered Christ while dying on a cross. While being firmly planted on this cross with nails in his hands and feet, his suffering became the place where faith awakened, mercy was given, and paradise was promised.
But this moment reveals another essential truth: while we long for the promises of God—eternal life, salvation, mercy, peace, strength, and purpose—we are promised something else…we are promised suffering.
Jesus never hid this truth from us. In fact, He was pretty clear on the promise. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).
To follow Christ is to carry a cross. To be even more united with Him is to have your heart firmly planted on the cross.
St. Paul reinforces this reality in Romans 8:17: “If we are children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.”
Our Christian life is not a path that avoids suffering; it is a path that transforms it. Just as Dismas is gifted this moment on the cross to look only to Jesus; we are gifted that same opportunity in our own suffering to look only to Him. But we tend to look at suffering as something negative. We live in a world where comfort, success, and earthly triumphs are the focus of our hearts, and this thing we deem negative—namely the cross—is actually positive and better for our souls by design. Imagine the perfect peace we could experience if we stopped seeing suffering as a pain and started perceiving it as a privilege. The Father sending His Son into the world to fully enter the human condition with us is proof of that design.
Jesus experienced the full range of human life. He knew joy, attending weddings and celebrating with friends. He knew laughter and friendship, sharing meals and walking closely with His disciples. He experienced temptation. He knew weariness. Most profoundly, He experienced suffering. The prophet Isaiah foretold this reality centuries earlier: “He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3).
Jesus endured betrayal, humiliation, abandonment, physical agony, and ultimately death on the cross. Yet through this suffering came redemption for the entire world.
“For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Christ understands suffering because He has lived it, and He lived it in such a way that we should come to trust in it. In the same we trust in His mercy, His grace, and His love.
The Lord’s love for us IS the cross. When we see the cross as the focus of His heart, we can see that on it is where His universal love fell into place. This is where we can begin to see suffering as love. Love without suffering is just our own incomplete love. But saving love—the love of our Lord—that is love that suffers. And this love deserves a response. A response equally as tender as Jesus’ promise to Dismas. Just as this good thief discovered in his final moments, the cross—when embraced with faith—is the pathway to Paradise.
“When we can suffer and love, we can do a lot. We can do the most that we can in this world.”
-Charles de Foucauld