My attitude to suffering (I suppose you could call it my theodicy) is that suffering, in all its terrible particularity, its wood, its nails, is a mysterious iniquity in the universe which can be redeemed by fellow-suffering: by offering suffering up in loving kindness to our fellow suffers. Our lot of suffering is a thing apportioned us as an education in what suffering is, that we can understand what the human condition is, and love each other through pain. The only thing that can justify pain's place in the world is the redemptively astounding fact that it is possible for human beings to redeem something as horrible as pain through love. This is the essence of Christian ethics as I understand them: that pain has the capacity to be redemptive, to be something that communes with others instead of separating us from them. Since love is painful, let all pain be out of love. We must strive to feel our burdens as though we felt them empathetically for others who have felt the same. Each human being's lot of suffering is a mystery particular to them that offers an intimations of other sufferings in their own particularity. Kindness forgives, kindness redeems. Everyone is much worse and much more worthy of compassion than we could ever know. Compassion is a redemption of the cosmos.

It's been a simple but important realisation for me to recognise that everybody has some reason for the way they are. Everyone has particular struggles and very good reasons for them which can't be understood by anyone else. Everybody has a reason for the way they are which is written as in a pen of iron in the foundation of the universe which can be read by no other but approximated by compassion. 'You suffer, and for that I love you' always substitutes for a knowledge as to why someone suffers. To assume there is sadness at the root of things is to see with an almost clairvoyant light, and to direct your heart with love to the remedying of that sadness is to take a infinitesimal but immeasurably meaningful step towards the rectification of the cosmos.

The apparent uniqueness of our pain, the utmost specificity of our anguish, shame and humiliation, is a point of commiseration with the pain of others, which is an equally unique experience. The singularity of our misery is a window into the generality of human misery, which always expresses itself with consummate singularity. ‘I am in an uncommunicable state, you are an in an uncommunicable state, so let my state be a symbol of and window into the mystery of yours.’ Let all suffering be an offering to the sorrowful mysteries. Every man is to be loved as both a creature fallen Adam and risen in Christ.