Suffering

"Impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassibilis." God cannot suffer, but He can suffer with. - Pope Benedict XVI


As I was walking to work this morning, I began my Rosary.  It takes an enormous amount of concentration for me to do this, partially because it's morning and I haven't had coffee yet, and partially because walking through Golden Gate Park, there are so many beautiful things to look at!  Consequently, I only got one decade prayed.  Today is Tuesday - the Sorrowful Mysteries.  As I was walking and praying and meditating, this line from Pope Benedict kept going through my head: Impassibilis est Deus...  I began to wonder.  How could God NOT suffer?  Christ was fully man and fully God, and He seemed to have suffered unthinkable sufferings in the Agony in the Garden, much less through the other events recounted in the Sorrowful Mysteries.  He suffered the worst tortures, and died the most horrendous death on the Cross.  And Pope Benedict's statement didn't make a lot of sense to me, until I thought about it as a whole: ...sed non incompassibilis.


"Passibilis", Latin, meaning "capable of feeling or suffering, susceptible to emotion"
Im- being a negating prefix
-com- being a linking word to mean "with"


God can not only not suffer, but He is incapable of suffering altogether.  He cares so much for mankind, however, that He deigned to descend to earth to suffer alongside our own suffering.


When Christ was agonizing in the Garden of Gethsemane, He saw the sinfulness of mankind in its totality.  He agonized with us, on our behalf, not for His own sake.  He assumed upon Himself the burden of our offenses.


We are never alone in our suffering.  Christ has already suffered-with us...suffered in our stead.  How little are our cares and sufferings in comparison to the burden He has shouldered for us.  And how ungrateful am I to persevere in my sinfulness, pride, and misery.