06/14/2026
SUFFERING IS NOT CAUSE FOR DESPAIR
Homily for Third Sunday after Pentecost
By Fr James Graham
Romans 5:1-10 / Matthew 6:22-33
The great mystery of suffering has confronted and baffled and confounded the human race for thousands of years. It challenges our faith directly and profoundly. People always ask, “Why do I have to suffer?” as if they think life is meant to be perfectly calm and smooth and easy. They say, “I can’t believe God is making me suffer like this,” as if they think that God decides to torment certain people just for fun.
Today’s readings from the Letter of St Paul to the early Christians in Rome and from St Matthew’s Gospel teach us the proper understanding of and response to suffering.
We know from reading the Scriptures that the sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, let suffering and death into the world. Suffering and death, pain and sorrow, sickness of soul and body are the result of sin. Some Bible scholars have suggested that the presence of sin in the world is the reason we don’t live 950 years like Noah or 175 years like Abraham or 180 years like Isaac or 147 years like Jacob. Until the whole world repents and turns away from sin and turns to God, all humanity will suffer the effects of sin.
Sometimes we suffer because of our own sins—smokers are likely to get lung cancer, gossips will find that no one trusts them, for example. Sometimes we suffer because of someone else’s sins—second-hand smoke hurts others, especially babies and children; gossip hurts the people who are being talked about. Sometimes suffering just happens; it cannot be traced directly to any sin of our own or of those around us—a pregnant woman spontaneously miscarries, a person who never drinks alcohol developes fatty liver disease, osteoarthritis attacks the joints in our fingers.
But does this mean that God wants us to suffer? Not at all. Suffering is just another one of the conditions of living in a world that has broken its perfect relationship with God.
Even that, however, is not cause for despair. St Paul tells the Romans, and Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, that God cares for the world and for God’s people. Christ died for us when we were still weak, ungodly sinners. God takes care of the grass, the birds, the flowers—all of creation—so of course God takes care of human beings, whom God created in God’s own image and likeness. Because of this loving care for creation, we should not worry about food or drink or clothing—or even suffering.
We should cultivate and hold on to our faith in God. We should not think of suffering as a good thing or as something God imposes on us to strengthen our faith. But we should understand suffering as something that ultimately brings us closer to God by making us trust and hope even more in God. St Paul says that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
This gift of hope through love allows us—in fact, impels us—to seek God’s kingdom and righteousness, and then to receive everything that God knows we need. And for this we give thanks and praise and glory to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and ever and to ages of ages. Amen.
