Three Ways Our Catholic Faith Helps us to Find Peace in Suffering

I spoke at a retreat last weekend about finding peace in the midst of sorrow and suffering. There were 40 women there from all walks of life, and all of them were suffering in some way - from child loss, infertility, grief, job loss, or some other trial. Suffering is part of life in this Valley of Tears.

But how can we possibly endure these things with peace?

Well, first of all, let's talk about what peace is, because many of us think it means that everything around us is calm and tranquil. Picture a spa day, or relaxing on the beach. A quiet adoration chapel, or even a day at home with children when everyone is playing nicely together and there's no fighting. These things can be peaceful, it's true.

But peace is deeper than this.

Because if we are anxious or upset about something, even a spa or a quiet adoration chapel won't bring us peace. If our minds are racing and we find ourselves ruminating or fearful, or in despair, our outside environments will not bring us peace.

They might help a bit, but the peace has to be present inside of us, doesn't it?

As someone who spent over 20 years of my life as a Protestant, I have found three things that the Catholic Church offers that bring tremendous peace in my suffering.

1 - The Crucifix

Although I was baptized Catholic and made my First Communion in the Catholic Church, I spent years of my life as a Protestant. All throughout my 20s, I attended a very large Protestant church. When they built a brand new building, its carpeted gymnasium-cum-church room had a stage, basketball nets, and large screens for displaying worship lyrics or powerpoint slides. But it did not even have a cross in it, let alone a crucifix.

The stage was front and center. The pastor, the worship leader, the band - they were the focus for the hundreds of people who filled the cushioned, stackable chairs every week.

As a Protestant, I didn't like looking at a crucifix. It felt too morose. Jesus was no longer on the cross, so why should we continue to picture Him there?

But since my conversion (reversion?) to Catholicism, I've come to recognize that the crucifix is one of the most comforting things when we are suffering.

Not only does it put all of our hardships into perspective, it also reminds us that we do not serve a God who was unwilling to undergo suffering Himself. When He told His disciples that if anyone would come after Him, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow Him (Matthew 16:24), He showed us how by going first.

Even then, most crucifixes are sanitized versions of what Christ actually endured. Naked, beaten beyond recognition, and with much of his beard torn out, Our sinless Lord endured the cruelest punishment possible to demonstrate His great love for us.

Hebrews 12 tells us that Christ endured the cross "for the joy that was set before Him." The joy wasn't the cross. He didn't love the cross or enjoy the cross. He endured it, because He knew that joy lay beyond that most painful Passion.

Whatever our suffering, for most of us, it will not include an experience like the crucifixion. Looking at a crucifix helps us to put our suffering in perspective. It helps us to trust that just as Jesus endured His suffering because it led to something greater - His resurrection and ascension to be seated at the right hand of the Father, not to mention the salvation of the world - so our own sufferings can lead to our good and God's glory if we look beyond what is seen to what is unseen. (2 Corinthians 4:18)

2 - The Blessed Mother

As He was dying on that cross, Our Lord gave us His mother as our own mother. As a Protestant, I did not understand the significance of this.

Not only did Mary play no role in my faith as a Protestant, but because I also had a mother wound, it took me a while to understand Mary's role even as a convert. When I came back into the Church, I said to the priest that I really just could not get on board with the Marian dogmas. I told him that I believed they could be true, but didn't really believe in my heart that they were true. Plus, I didn't really see the need for Mary to be involved at all. I was fine with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. I didn't want another mother.

After the loss of my twins, however, Mary made herself known to me in a very gradual but very real way.

First, I felt a prompting to pray the rosary - something that I just did not do because I didn't understand it. Why the repetition? Why the Hail Marys? Why not just pray directly to God with words that came from my heart?

But deep in my grief, prayer felt hard.

I didn't know what to say to God after I'd prayed so hard asking Him to save our girls and He didn't. If I did pray, it was either a desperate "Help me!" hiccuped through my sobs or a begrudging "Do whatever You want - You'll be doing that anyway."

Because it felt so hard, prayer happened less and less frequently. God seemed far away and I didn't know what to do to fix my relationship with Him.

But then one quiet morning, I felt a nudge in my heart to pray the rosary. I didn't know how to do it, so I looked on YouTube and found a video to pray along with.

It felt like a balm to my broken heart.

The repetition - the very thing that always seemed so silly about the rosary to me - actually brought me so much comfort. It was therapeutic.

I began praying the rosary every morning, and I believe that Our Lady used that as a way to make herself known to me.

In the years that followed, she would demonstrate to me, through her answering of novenas and a personal encounter I felt with her as Our Lady of Sorrows, that she was a loving and powerful mother who knows that suffering is part of life on this earth and wants to give us the graces that we need to endure it.

Asking Our Lady to intercede for me and mother me through my suffering has been one of the most healing experiences for me. It's for this reason that my retreats for grieving mothers are centered around Our Lady of Sorrows and the example she sets for us as a mother who submitted herself to God's will and endured the death of her Child while maintaining perfect virtue. She kept her eyes on Jesus and believed that He was following God's plan for the salvation of the world.

It is because she was able to do this that she has been crowned Queen of Heaven and Earth.

Honoring Our Lady, her suffering, and her glory are all gifts to us that the Catholic Church offers that I never knew existed as a Protestant.

3 - The Eucharist

The sacraments, and specifically the Eucharist, are another source of peace that the Catholic church offers us in our suffering.

The Eucharist, as Christ's body, blood, soul, and divinity, recalls both His incarnated body and His resurrected body.

At His incarnation, angels announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds and said “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”

Hundreds of years earlier, the prophet Isaiah foretold the coming Messiah, saying, "For a child is born to us, and a son is given to us, and the government is upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called, Wonderful, Counselor, God the Mighty, the Father of the world to come, the Prince of Peace."

After He instituted the Eucharist during the Last Supper, Jesus said to his disciples, "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." (John 14:27)

And when He appeared to the disciples after His resurrection, the first words Jesus says to them are, "Peace be with you." He says this twice while showing them His hands and side, and then it's the first thing He says to Thomas a week later. (John 20)

This peace did not mean that the disciples would be free from troubles or problems. In fact, most of them were martyred for their faith in Jesus. But Jesus specifically says, "I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." (John 16:33)

Jesus is the Prince of Peace. Where Jesus is, there is peace. Peace comes from Jesus.

Protestants do not have the Eucharist. They may have "Communion" of bread and wine, but because they do not have a priesthood that comes from Jesus, there is no consecration and therefore no power in the bread and wine to change us. Their bread is not Jesus.

As Catholics, we have the Eucharist as a source of peace for our souls.

If you are suffering, friend, Jesus offers you peace.

Not a peace that means no problems, not peace that is dependent on our circumstances, but real and lasting peace that comes from fixing your eyes on Jesus and on the unseen eternal in the midst of the trials and tribulations of life in this vale of tears.

"You keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you, because he trusts in you." - Isaiah 26:3

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If you are suffering from the loss of a child, my Present in the Pain retreat offers tools to help you make peace with your grief and find solace in our Catholic faith. Learn more about the retreat by clicking here.

As a Catholic mindset coach, I can also help you identify the thoughts that may be robbing you of your peace. By showing you how to take every thought captive, I can help you align with truth and find the peace that Jesus promised. Learn more about Catholic coaching by clicking here.