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Finding God in Suffering
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Father Christopher Mahar is a priest of the Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island. He earned his Ph.D. in Theological Ethics from the Catholic University of Louvain and taught Moral Theology at Providence College, later serving at the Vatican Dicastery for the Promotion of Integral Human Development. He currently serves as Pastor of St. Augustine Church in Providence.
Enter into the mystery of redemptive suffering
Finding God in Suffering is a 6-part series that explores suffering through the lens of the many questions we all ask when suffering arises.
Why is there so much suffering? How can I make sense of my own pain? Where is God in the midst of it all? These questions echo throughout our lives, and there are no quick answers. Yet our faith encourages us to look to Jesus Christ, who walked the path of suffering—and invites us to do the same.
In Finding God in Suffering, Father Christopher Mahar draws upon the thought of Saint John Paul II and nearly twenty years of teaching, preaching, and pastoral counseling to explore how "even in suffering, we can find love." Our suffering is not meaningless. It is infinitely valuable to God and can become a place of encounter with him.
SESSION ONE
The Meaning of Human Suffering
How can suffering have meaning, and what does our faith have to teach us about what that meaning might be?
SESSION TWO
Saint Paul and the Experience of the Cross
What did the Apostle Paul have to say about his own suffering, and how can that help us to understand our own?
SESSION THREE
Search for Meaning: The Discovery of God
How can our desire to find meaning in our suffering and daily crosses help us to come to a deeper discovery of God in our lives?
SESSION FOUR
The Mystery of Love and
Redemptive Suffering
What do love and redemptive suffering have to do with one another? How can one increase the other, and what does this mean for how we live our lives?
SESSION FIVE
Thorns in the Flesh
Is it OK to ask God for a smaller, lighter cross? How do the examples of Jesus and St. Paul help us to understand what accepting our cross means.
SESSION SIX
Bringing Light to the Dark
How does God bring light into the darkness of suffering? What does it mean to hope, and how can we discover hope in our lives?
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