My wife and I have been blessed beyond belief by our 4 tremendous children, who were baptized into the Church in October ’06 in the presence of several dear friends, including Kasia of “The Clam Rampant.” Our oldest son, 8-year old J.D., is severely affected by autism, which has stolen his ability to speak and understand most spoken language. His next-oldest sister, L.M., is an extremely bright 7 year old who is affected by Asperger syndrome and crippling social anxieties. These challenges have kept her mostly housebound, and you can imagine the problem that poses for a Catholic family that is bound by Church law to attend Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation. Their next-oldest sister, 5-year old A.N., has recently been diagnosed with ADHD, but is otherwise neurotypical. Our youngest son, 10-month old A.P., is a healthy, energetic little guy, and I suspect he’s quite tired of having big-sister A.N. in his face constantly (but, at least she loves him!).

One of the primary reasons we converted to Catholicism is related to the topic of redemptive suffering. Evangelicals in the pews often get inconsistent messages on the topic from well-meaning and generally compassionate pastors, but unfortunately these pastors don’t realize the confusion they’re causing in the heads of their followers. For example, from our former pastor, I heard sermons in which he described suffering as the mark of a true believer – that is, if you’re not suffering something, then you’d better look at your relationship with Christ and see what’s wrong. More frequently, I heard the following: that if you’re suffering, then your relationship with God isn’t right, and you’d better figure out what sin God is trying to root out of your life through it.

Consider these two takes on suffering in relation to the disabilities of my children. In the context of the more-frequent of my former pastor’s explanations of suffering, I was to conclude that God had stuck my children with autistic spectrum disorders as a way to help me see my sins. The obvious question becomes, “What kind of God would punish others because of my sins?”

The concept of redemptive suffering is something I only discovered when I started looking into the teachings and history of the Catholic Church. Though I’m still learning what it means to “offer it up,” something Catholics often tell each other when they’re facing trials, I can appreciate the concept in light of this passage from St. Paul’s letter to the Colossians, chapter 1, verses 24-26a (NAB): “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ on behalf of his body, which is the church, of which I am a minister in accordance with God’s stewardship given to me to bring to completion for you the word of God, the mystery hidden from ages and from generations past.”

I still remember the day I was sitting in our family room with my Bible, and that passage that I had so often skipped before became crystal clear, and nearly knocked me out of my chair. Fortunately, this was illuminated to me when I was in the middle of wavering between evangelicalism and Catholicism, and it was one of the final pushes that got me swimming across the Tiber.