Between Asceticism and Theodicy: A Synthetic Sketch of Patristic Suffering

Christ recreates all creation that follows Him. Personally embracing His Salvation is the transcendent and central Christian duty, realized as a certain act of taking responsibility. This embracement turns the fact of suffering into a weapon against the devil and the appearance that natural biological death is a misfortune into the insight that it is the opening of the Gate of the Kingdom. This paper outlines the Holy and Living Tradition’s essential message on the topic at hand: The message about the fact that suffering is, in itself, neither good nor bad and about the way in which the Cross of Christ offers the rectifying Justification of the human being and, through man, of the whole of the fallen creation. Consequently, rather than a philological approach, it offers a synthetic dogmatical insight into this, based on the premise that the Holy Tradition is alive since the first centuries and until the more recent Saint Theologians of the One Church.