How many times have you told another about your suffering, and his response is to “offer it up”?
Generations of Catholics have heard those words in sickness, grief, humiliation, and every other hardship life hands out. When Catholics refer to “offering up” our sufferings, we mean that we are uniting our sufferings to Christ on the cross in order to join in his redemptive plan for mankind. We believe that we can actively participate in the redemption of souls through our suffering.
Protestants use the phrase as well, but it comes from an entirely different mentality. Protestants who say “offer it up” are more saying “give it to the Lord,” or “Let the Lord handle it.”
On its face, that is not bad spiritual advice. We are called to trust God with our sufferings and difficulties. Sometimes there are no comforting answers as to why we suffer. And an act of trust is the most faithful thing we can do.
To Protestant ears, though, the phrase “offer it up” from a Catholic can sound like Rome walking back Calvary.
The Protestant objection deserves to be stated plainly before we answer it. Jesus said from the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30). The author of Hebrews goes further: “By a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (10:14). Observing this, if the sacrifice of Christ is complete, sufficient, and once for all, what is left for a Christian’s suffering to accomplish? Why would Catholics speak as though pain and grief could add something Calvary lacked?
That question becomes more pointed when we get to the verse Catholics build this doctrine on: “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church” (Col. 1:24).
The word “lacking” here draws a lot of ire. It is hard to find a verse that sounds more dangerous out of context.
What the Cross Actually Lacks: Nothing
Catholic teaching does not flinch from this. We profess that the sacrifice of Christ is complete, perfect, and infinitely sufficient for the redemption of the world (cf. CCC 614, 617, and 1367). Nothing a human being does—suffering included—adds to what Christ accomplished on Calvary. If Paul meant that his own suffering topped off some shortfall in the atonement, he would be contradicting the New Testament.
But Paul chose his words carefully, guided by the Holy Spirit. A “lack” in sufficient value for atonement is not the idea he conveyed. Here is the hinge: the difference is between the value of Christ’s sacrifice and its application.
The value of the cross is infinite and complete. It was closed to addition the moment Christ breathed his last. Its application to individual souls, across every century, is not a single instant—it is a history still unfolding, and Christ has chosen, freely, to let his body (the church) participate in handing that grace forward. The “lacking” in Colossians 1:24 refers this application—not lacking in worth, but lacking in distribution. What Christ purchased once, the Church still delivers, through preaching; through the sacraments; and, Paul says, through the suffering of Christians united to his own.
Pope St. John Paul II made this same point in Salvifici Doloris (an incredible and seemingly forgotten treatise on suffering):
The very participation in Christ’s suffering finds, in these apostolic expressions, as it were a twofold dimension. If one becomes a sharer in the sufferings of Christ, this happens because Christ has opened his suffering to man, because he himself in his redemptive suffering has become, in a certain sense, a sharer in all human sufferings. Man, discovering through faith the redemptive suffering of Christ, also discovers in it his own sufferings; he rediscovers them, through faith, enriched with a new content and new meaning (20).
This is what Catholics call “redemptive suffering.” Because Christ entered human suffering, we are able to share in his sufferings. We are mystically united with him as his body.
Isn’t This Just Works-Righteousness?
If suffering does something spiritually productive, doesn’t that put merit back on the table? No, and the Church has never taught otherwise.
A Christian’s suffering is not a private contribution alongside grace. Rather, it is grace already at work. The Catechism explains that whatever merit belongs to a Christian’s good works is credited first to God’s grace and then only secondarily and dependently to the believer. “The fatherly action of God is first on his own initiative, and then follows man’s free acting through his collaboration, so that the merit of good works is to be attributed in the first place to the grace of God, then to the faithful (2008).
St. Paul makes the same point about himself. Writing to the Colossians, he isn’t boasting about a heroic performance and skill he had developed. He’s describing something closer to conscription: Christ has enrolled Paul’s suffering into his own, the way a body’s members share what happens to any one of them. “You are the body of Christ and individually members of it” (1 Cor. 12:27). Pope Pius XII developed this image in Mystici Corporis Christi, teaching that Christ wills his members to cooperate in distributing the fruits of redemption through their prayers, good works, and voluntary penances (12, 44, 59). Cooperation is not addition. A branch doesn’t add to the vine by bearing fruit; it simply does what the vine’s life in it makes possible.
Christ Did Not Make Suffering Good
Sickness, injustice, pain, and grief belong to a world wounded by sin, and Jesus never named suffering as a beatitude—persecution for righteousness being more about the enduring than the object of the suffering. Jesus healed those in pain. He wept at Lazarus’s tomb. In Gethsemane, he asked that the cup pass from him.
The Son of God took on a human nature capable of suffering and freely accepted the cross. The Resurrection revealed that cross not as evil’s victory, but as the means by which Christ conquered sin and death. Apply this to Christians: we do not endure suffering and wait for it to end, but rather accept it willingly and ask, “How can I unite this to the cross?”
The Fathers Already Answered This
None of the teaching on suffering and “offering it up” is a modern Catholic workaround. St. John Chrysostom, commenting on Colossians 1:24, was careful to note that Paul isn’t claiming his suffering as his own accomplishment. Paul suffers for Christ and for the Church, Chrysostom writes, and Christ is the source of the strength that makes the suffering possible in the first place.
And what things I suffer, I suffer, he says, on his account: not to me, therefore, express your gratitude, but to him, for it is he himself who suffers. Just as if one, when sent to a person, should make request to another, saying, I beseech you, go for me to this person, then the other should say, it is on his account I am doing it.
Redemptive suffering is not Christian self-sufficiency dressed up in pious language. The sufferer depends on Christ so completely that even weakness becomes the place where Christ acts. In short, Christ suffered for our redemption, and we are united to Christ. When we are suffering, Christ is suffering also; therefore, we don’t boast that we did the redeeming, but that Christ did the redeeming through our participation. Even after his work was accomplished, and “finished,” he is still prepared to be afflicted for our sake,
We should appreciate the pastoral weight in this teaching. One of the cruelest experiences of prolonged illness or disability is the sense of uselessness—the person who once worked, raised children, or served a parish, now dependent on everyone else. There appears to be nothing wholesome or useful about his suffering. What can that person still give? John Paul II answered without hedging: suffering united to Christ becomes an “irreplaceable service” for the salvation of others (Salvifici Doloris 27). Pope Benedict XVI said something similar, describing the sick not as passive recipients of the Church’s care, but as protagonists in her pilgrimage of faith (World Youth Day 2010).
None of this excuses neglecting the sick or romanticizing pain. Catholics are still bound to seek charity, especially in the corporal works of mercy. Redemptive suffering isn’t a reason to prolong pain for suffering’s sake.
So What Does “Offer It Up” Actually Mean?
Strip away the objections, and the practice is simple, and nowhere near as theologically loaded as it sounds.
First, embrace the suffering for what it is. Christianity doesn’t ask anyone to pretend pain doesn’t hurt; Christ himself prayed in agony in the garden, and the Psalms are full of raw complaints.
Second, unite it to Christ, in a prayer as plain as “Jesus, I unite this suffering to your cross. Use it for my sanctification and for the good of others.” Even a “Jesus, I trust in you” through hardship is an act of faith.
Third, attach it to someone. Hubands and wives especially should do this as often as possible. Pray for a child or a friend who has drifted from the Faith, the souls in purgatory, or someone with no one else praying for him.
Finally, carry your suffering with charity rather than resentment, patience instead of anger, trust instead of despair. The suffering itself may not change, but the one suffering it can.
John Paul II said that in our suffering, Christ hands us an invitation: “Follow me” (Salvifici Doloris 26). The meaning of suffering is discovered at the foot of the cross, one act of union at a time.
It Is Finished—Not Closed
Christ’s last word from the cross was tetelestai: it is finished. The Redeemer’s sacrifice needs nothing added to it. But his love was never content to stop at Calvary. It was always headed somewhere: into his body, into every soul willing to carry a cross of his own and hand it to him.
That’s the gospel, applied to all generations, one offered-up suffering at a time.