The Question I Hear More Than Any Other

A Question That Follows Me Everywhere

I have sat with it in hospital rooms, in retirement homes, and in quiet corners after a funeral. Someone leans in and asks some version of the same thing: if God loves us, why did this happen?

It comes from a mother whose child is sick. It comes from someone who just lost a job, or a parent, or a marriage. It is the most honest question a person can ask, and I do not think it deserves a quick answer.

Why the Easy Answers Fail

Early on, I noticed myself reaching for comfortable lines. Everything happens for a reason. God has a plan. These things are true in a broad sense, but said too fast, they can sound like a way of ending the conversation rather than entering it.

People in pain are not looking for a theory. They are looking for someone to stay in the room with them while the question stays open. I have learned that the better response is usually silence first, and words second.

What I Say Instead

When I do speak, I try to separate two things that often get mixed together: why suffering exists, and where God is inside it. The first question is enormous, and centuries of theologians have written about it without settling it completely. The second question is smaller and more answerable, and it is the one that actually helps someone get through the night.

I point people toward the idea that God does not stand outside suffering, watching from a distance. The Christian story is built around a God who enters into pain rather than explaining it away. That shift, from asking for a reason to looking for a presence, changes the conversation.

What Carmelite Spirituality Taught Me About This

The Carmelite tradition I was formed in has never been shy about darkness. Saint John of the Cross wrote about what he called the dark night, a season where prayer feels empty and God feels absent. He did not treat that as a failure of faith. He treated it as part of how faith deepens.

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux went through something similar near the end of her life, doubting things she had believed with total confidence for years. Neither of them offered a tidy explanation for suffering. What they offered was permission to stay faithful while still asking hard questions.

That is what I try to pass on. You do not need a finished answer to keep going. You need enough trust to take the next step in the dark.

Sitting With People Instead of Fixing Them

Visiting the sick and the lonely has shaped how I answer this question more than any book did. I have sat by hospital beds where the honest thing to do was say very little. A hand on a shoulder does more than a paragraph of theology.

I have also noticed that people rarely remember the exact words a priest says to them in these moments. They remember whether someone showed up, and whether that person let them be angry, confused, or silent without rushing to fix it.

A Small Shift That Helps

If you are ever the one sitting with someone in this kind of pain, whether you are a minister or a friend, here is the shift I would suggest. Stop trying to answer the question "why." Start trying to answer the question "who is with me." The first one may never resolve. The second one you can actually provide, just by staying.

Living With an Open Question

I still do not have a complete answer to why suffering happens, and I am suspicious of anyone who claims they do. What I have instead is a way of carrying the question that does not require resolving it before moving forward.

That is, in the end, what I try to offer people who ask me this. Not a closed case, but company for an open one.