Description

IMPORTANT: This UK ONLY item is a special order and will take approximately 7-10 days to arrive. It will be delivered separately from the rest of your order. Please click here for more details.

Salvifici Doloris is widely considered to contain some of John Paul II’s best writing. In it, he tackled one of humankind’s most difficult questions: Is there a meaning to suffering? Written in 1984, it was the first systematic reflection on the Church’s teaching regarding the Christian meaning of human suffering. 

There are three central themes explored in Salvifici Doloris: 

• The creative value of suffering: in that if God has permitted this relationship between life, suffering, death and resurrection, there must be a deeper meaning to it than simply the fragility of humanity. Suffering seems to belong to man’s transcendence: it is one of those points in which man is in a certain sense destined to go beyond himself, and he is called to this in a mysterious way. 
• The salvific value of suffering: because the weaknesses of all human sufferings are capable of being infused with the same power of God manifested in Christ’s Cross.
• And the Christian vocation in moments of suffering: It is a vocation. Christ does not explain the reasons for suffering in the abstract; before all else, He says, "Follow me!" Come! Take part through your suffering in this work of saving the world, a salvation achieved through my suffering!