Suffering

In Orthodoxy, suffering is neither meaningless nor a sign of God's abandonment: united to Christ's own suffering, it becomes a means of healing, humility, and salvation.

Oversimplified

• Suffering entered the world through the Fall, but in Christ it is transfigured — no longer only a curse but a path of purification and union with God.
• "Sufferings and even death, cut off the growth of sin." — St. Basil

Summary

Suffering is among the hardest facts the Christian faith must reckon with, and Orthodoxy neither explains it away nor treats it as proof that God is absent or cruel. It teaches that suffering and death entered the world through the Fall, yet that God permits them within His providence and, in Christ, turns them toward good. Because the sinless Son of God Himself suffered and died, human suffering can be joined to His and so become redemptive rather than merely destructive — a means of humbling pride, checking the growth of sin (as St. Basil says, "sufferings and even death cut off the growth of sin"), deepening compassion, and drawing the soul toward God. The martyrs and the ascetics witness that grace can transfigure even torment into glory. This is no invitation to seek out pain, but the promise that no suffering offered to God is ever wasted (see The Passion, Theosis). Cross-link The Passion, Original Sin, Theosis, Prayer.

Animal Suffering

St. John Chrysostom writes on this in Homilies on Romans, Homily 14.5.

Sources

[^1]: St. Basil the Great — "sufferings and even death cut off the growth of sin.".