I never seem to get over the face of my childhood friend who died within hours of a snakebite. He was the only child of his parents. While going to work, his father could be seen bowing devoutly at Lord Shiva's temple everyday without fail. After his son's death, he not only stopped that, but he was also heard saying, "I do not believe in God, puja or prayer. Why could the Lord not save my Guddu's life"?Last Sunday, five members of a family were killed in the Capital when a speeding bus rammed into the Maruti they were travelling in. The family was returning home from Gurudwara Bangla Sahib after offering prayers. The question, "Why couldn't the power of prayers prevent the accident?", will keep dinning the ears of the bereaved members for a long time.Last week in the Philippines, I met a former acquaintance of mine who has completely stopped praying to Jesus and going to Church because she lost her only son to the Hepatitis B monster.To lose a dear one, despite "deep faith", prayers and charities,can be such a shattering experience that one can totally turn away from God and religion. The recurring questions then start hitting, "What did we do to deserve this? Were we not faithful in our worship? Are you a God without feelings? Are you utterly powerless? Or are you there at all?"The chain of questions, with slight variations, also take on a general form, like, what is the meaning of suffering? Is there an end to human affliction? Why does God not put an end to evil, which is the source of all misery? These questions have been asked from time immemorial and will go on as long as there is physical, spiritual and psychological pain in the world.Obviously, no answer to these and other questions is forthcoming. The lofty silence is eternal. The sufferings go on. One can only meditate and attempt to cull out the answers from others' experiences.The Good Friday event, i.e. the crucifixion, ending in Jesus' death raises such intriguing questions. Jesus was the Son of God. He was sent to establish God'sKingdom. There was no blemish in Him. He was compassionate to the needy. He was Love incarnate. He worked miracles and saved others. He is said to have even raised the dead to life. Why could he not prevent his own sufferings? Why did God not come to his rescue despite Jesus crying out to Him, "Father, why have you forsaken me?" or "if it is possible, take this cup (suffering) away from me". Was God really powerless to save His own Son?I believe that through the Good Friday event, God the Father and His Son Jesus wish to convey to us the meaning of suffering in human life. I am quite convinced that God could have found hundreds of other ways to save humanity from sin and could have "taken away the cup of suffering" from Jesus. But that He let it happen and that Jesus Himself accepted the cup saying, "not my will but Thine be done", only goes on to consolidate the value of suffering for human beings.True, in themselves the questions regarding faith and the loss of the beloved, or other causes of immensesuffering, have no immediate, reasonable and convincing answers. It all looks meaningless. But the victory over death through Jesus' rising from the dead on Easter only proves that there will be moksha from the trammels of this life. Easter also tells us that our own resurrection in the end will be a final victory from all our afflictions.Carlo Carretto, in his book Why O Lord?, reflecting on why God allows suffering, maintains that God draws the best qualities from men and women by allowing them to suffer and that suffering is not evil but is a grace given by God to better oneself. Though Jesus was a dispenser of grace for humanity, without grace, he could have hardly said, "Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing", as he hung dying on the Cross that Friday afternoon.
