On a trip to the Philippines, Pope Francis met a 12 year old girl who captured the hearts of people around the world. She tearfully asked the Pope why God allowed children to suffer? The young girl, Glyzelle Palomar, used to live her life on the streets. She was abandoned by her parents and left to make her own way as best she could. Glyzelle broke down in tears as she asked: “Why is God allowing something like this to happen, even to innocent children? And why are there so few helping us?” 

Pope Francis, visibly moved, responded, “Only when we are able to cry are we able to come close to responding to your question. There are some realities that you can only see through eyes that are cleansed by tears.” 

Naturally, any person comes face to face with the question: “Why does a God who is good and loving, permit or allow such suffering to enter into the world?” People suffer all around us. No doubt we ourselves at times need to embrace the mystery of suffering. Perhaps the most difficult suffering of all is to lose someone, to have someone we love, a spouse, a parent, a sibling, a close friend, or, God forbid, a daughter or son die. 

There are no easy answers to suffering. One can read every theology book in the world and still be left wondering about the question of suffering. But Jesus was crystal clear about how his earthly journey would end. He said his disciples: “Thus it is written that the Christ would suffer and rise from the dead on the third day and that repentance, for the forgiveness of sins, would be preached in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses to these things.”

On Good Friday, we see our Lord Jesus face tremendous suffering, humiliation, unjust judgment, scourging, beating, crowning with thorns. He is made to drag his cross to Calvary, being cursed and spat upon all the way. Nails are pounded into his flesh and his is lifted up, struggling to breath. But perhaps the greatest suffering of Jesus on the cross is not physical. He’s been abandoned by all his disciples except for John, his mother Mary, and a few faithful women. He cries out to his Father, “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” 

On the cross, Jesus is saying to his Father: “Are you here with me? Am I dying alone? Are you in the this horrible dark place?” And then he says, trusting, knowing that his Father is with him, that the Spirit of God is present, “Into your hands, Father, I commend my spirit? 

When God became a human person, he did not run from suffering. He faced the cross. And so when we face the cross in our life, be it on a physical plane, be it emotional suffering, spiritual heartache. Being it just watching the news and seeing how much pain there is in the world. We look at the cross and say, “If God was at Calvary, and he was. If God was dying on the cross, and he was. Then God is in every place of pain and suffering. God is there. God is present. God has not abandoned the poor and pain-filled people of the world.”

But it’s important to remember, that our faith is not only a Good Friday faith. Good Friday leads to Easter Sunday. It leads to Resurrection. It leads to Christ overcoming the bonds of death and being raised up in the Spirit to life eternal with God the Father in heaven. We live that hope. The funeral mass prayer sums it up: “There comes a time when every tear shall be wiped away and we shall see you, our God, as you are and become like you and be with you, face to face.