Suffering to Aid the Suffering

I ran across the following line today in Vergil's Aeneid.

Non ignara mali, miseris succurrere disco. (Aeneid, I.630)

Queen Dido of Carthage is welcoming Aeneas and men to her city after they have landed on her shores thanks to a storm stirred up by their implacable enemy Juno. She says to them, "Because I am not inexperienced with misfortune, I have learned to aid those who suffer."

What a wonderful statement! Increasingly I find that when I suffer, and let's face it, any sufferings I am apt to encounter in this society are minuscule compared with the sufferings of most the world, I am better able to understand the pains of others. God did not need to become human and suffer as we do to understand our sufferings. His omniscience precludes such an epistemic necessity. Yet He did become human and suffer as we do, and the result is that we know that He knows our sufferings. Christ's suffering produced an epistemic certainty for us.

And because we know that He knows our sufferings, we also know that He knows how to aid us. Our knowledge is not rooted in just in our belief in His omniscience and omnipotence. Our confidence and hope in Him is grounded in our epistemic certainty that we have obtained through His human suffering.

Jesus says in Matthew 5:11-12, "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you." Not only do our sufferings produce solidarity with and identity with our Lord, but they enable to say with Dido, "Because I am not inexperienced with misfortune, I have learned to aid those who suffer." In this way we are better able to accomplish the work to which our Lord has called us.