Father Richard reminds us that while we are invited to be in solidarity with the pain of others, God carries all pain:

Many people rightly question how there can be a good God or a just God in the presence of so much evil and suffering in the world—about which God appears to do nothing. Exactly how is God loving and sustaining what God created? That is our dilemma.

I believe—if I am to believe Jesus—that God is suffering love. If we are created in God’s image, and if there is so much suffering in the world, then God must also be suffering. How else can we understand the revelation of the cross and that the central Christian logo is a naked, bleeding, suffering man?

Many of the happiest and most peaceful people I know love a crucified God who walks with crucified people, and thus reveals and redeems their plight as his own. For them, Jesus does not observe human suffering from a distance; he is somehow in human suffering, with us and for us.

The suffering that we carry is our solidarity with the one, universal longing of all humanity, and thus it can teach us great compassion and patience with both ourselves and others. Some mystics even go so far as to say that there is only one suffering; it is all the same, and it is all the suffering of God (see Colossians 1:24).

Episcopal priest Stephanie Spellers helps us understand how our one “entwined” suffering spurs us to take action in solidarity:

Solidarity is love crossing the borders drawn by self-centrism, in order to enter into the situation of the other, for the purpose of mutual relationship and struggle that heals us all and enacts God’s beloved community.

Solidarity is the voice that finally comprehends: “You are not the same as me, but part of you lives in me. Your freedom and mine were always inextricably entwined. Now I see it, and because of what I see, I choose to live differently. I will go there, with you, for your sake and for my own.”. . .

Latina theologian Ada María Isasi-Díaz [1943–2012] sums up solidarity as “the union of kindred persons” who work together toward “the unfolding of the ‘kin-dom’ of God.” [1] The bottom line is not who wins or loses the struggle, or even who secures enough allies to flip the power dynamic. Isasi-Díaz wants us to see that the loving, sacrificial friendship at the heart of solidarity is itself the antidote to sin and oppression. 

Domination, control, and self-or group-centric behavior alienate and separate us from God, from each other, and from ourselves as beloved children of God. By contrast, embracing union with oppressed and despised peoples, placing any privilege you hold at the disposal of the movement to dismantle oppression and alienation and to restore balance and wholeness to human community—this solidary love is how we most closely and faithfully follow Jesus and join him in beloved community. [2]

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