From their book ‘The Christ Who Heals’, Fiona and Terryl Givens shared:
“It is in Third Nephi, that we find the most tender portrait of Christ fully vulnerable to human woundedness. “And it came to pass that when Jesus had spoken, he cast his eyes round about again on the multitude, and beheld that they were in tears, and did look steadfastly upon him as if they would ask him to tarry a little longer with them. And he said unto them: Behold, my bowels are filled with compassion towards you. Have ye any that are sick among you? Bring them hither. Have ye any that are lame, or blind, or halt, or maimed, or leprous, or that are withered, or that are deaf, or that are afflicted in any manner? Bring them hither and I will heal them.” 42
Of course not all suffering can be alleviated when and how we wish. In such cases, our promise is that our suffering can be sanctified. Gregory of Nazianzus posed a question about Christ’s mortal experiences. “Jesus, Who Chose The Fishermen, Himself also useth a net, and changeth place for place. Why?” He then ventured an answer: “that He may hallow more places. . . . He teacheth, now on a mountain; now He discourseth on a plain; now He passeth over into a ship; now he rebuketh the surges. And perhaps He goes to sleep, in order that He may bless sleep also; perhaps He is tired that he may hallow weariness also; perhaps that He may make tears blessed.”43 That the Creator of the world, the Divine Son, worked a net, slept off his weariness, ate fish and loaves, and wept over Lazarus imbues such human actions with holiness.
Most significant for our healing, perhaps, is our knowledge that by his suffering, he made our suffering holy. As Justin Martyr taught, by “becoming a partaker of our sufferings, he might also bring us healing.”44 This purpose was critical to Christ’s Atonement; Enoch was promised that “the blood of the righteous [would] be shed, that all they that mourn would be sanctified.”45 This principle is implicit in the Sacrament of the Lord’s supper. In this weekly ritual, we are eating symbolically the Lord’s broken body and drinking his spilled blood. These are emblems of the suffering Christ, and the sacrament prayer is that these emblems of suffering will be sanctified, made holy to us and in us. As we remember with gratitude his pain and agony, we are at the same time reminded that our own pain and agony are being sanctified. For Latter-day Saints, partaking of this sacrament is an ordinance that unites us in shared and sanctifying suffering. “Through suffering Christ showed us that our own suffering is worthwhile, and the occasion through which to grow morally by imitating him.46
In A.J. Cronin’s poignant novel The Keys of the Kingdom, a kindly priest persists in his friendship for a rebellious atheist. “I still can’t believe in God,” he announces near his life’s close. “Does that matter now? He believes in you.” “Don’t delude yourself,” the man replies. “I’m not repentant,” to which the priest responds, “All human suffering is an act of repentance.”47 In the same spirit, Charles Taylor gives us a piercing insight into the nature of sin: “Our sin is our resistance to going along with God’s initiative in making suffering reparative,”48 His observation implies a particularly coherent account of suffering that partakes of our own perspective shaped by the restoration account of our mortal journey. Our suffering is not punitive, nor is it a spillover of an Adamic rebellion. It was at the very heart of the journey that our Heavenly Parents proposed, and may likely have been the aspect that incited a third of our spirit siblings to reject the mortal estate. As Edward Beecher opined, it was “a discipline of suffering, such as they needed to fit them to be the founders of the universe of God,” that appalled and then overwhelmed the indecisive.49 In those cases and in our own, it is—ultimately—the making of divinity, not humanity, that is in play. ~Fiona and Terryl Givens, The Christ Who Heals (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2017), 86-88
