Each one of us is given a choice. When we suffer, we can suffer alone uselessly, or we can suffer with God usefully. 

Recently, I was discussing this with someone who said: “The concept of offering it up to God is laughable to me.”

If God is ethereal, wispy, star dust and distant, then I can see how a person might arrive at that conclusion. But as Catholics, we believe that God is here, now, present with us, always. See Matthew 28:20 (“I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”). 

Our God stands beyond time, unbound by past present and future. Jesus still carries the scars of his agony on the cross. So, when we suffer, we know that he suffered. We are bound together with Him, through our shared human experience of pain. 

Just as Jesus accepted His suffering and allowed God to transform it into the joy of Easter, we too can participate in our own redemptive transformation. Every time we suffer, we can choose to cooperate with His grace, to join forces–body and soul– with the crucified carpenter and pray to the Father: “I offer up this suffering to You, Oh Lord, and I know that You can make good out of this.”