Maryh wrote:People lose the sense of a God who's with them in their suffering.
But are those people truly with Christ in His suffering?
The faith of many is tepid at best. And for these, when the road gets a little tough with pain, it is then that they mistakenly come to the conclusion that God is not with them. What they lose sight of (or maybe don't know at all) is that it is
we who have the obligation to join with Christ in His suffering - not the other way around. Paul says it in Philippians
"to know him and the power of his resurrection [by the] sharing of his sufferings by being conformed to his death"
That means we are to join with Christ, not only by the pious testimony of our lips, but by taking up our cross [pain and suffering] and following in His footsteps. In other words, we are to crucify ourselves.
It is a hard thing for mortals like us to comprehend, but suffering is the way God has chosen to bring redemption to a fallen world. So we cannot join with Christ - “die to ourselves” - without suffering. Hard to understand why God chose suffering as the way to salvation. And on a personal level we might ask, why has God asked me to suffer? I'm one of His most ardent believers. If we ask a question like this, it can explain why Our Lady says
"You do not comprehend pain".
But more deeply on this point, we not only don’t realize
why God has called us to suffer, but many in the world don’t realize
that God has called us to suffer. Author C. S. Lewis said it well:
“The question is not why the righteous suffer, but why some do not!”
Seeing people stoically suffering their pain so that they can present a beautiful example to others misses the point.
In order to truly “know” Him and the power of His resurrection, we must first experience the communion of His sufferings as Paul says
"by being conformed unto His death". By allowing pain and suffering into our lives as a way to join with Christ, God is conforming us into His death wherein eternal life resides.