How We Find Joy in Suffering

Embracing Adversity: How Joy is Born from Struggle Every Time

Above: President Ronald Reagan meeting with Pope John Paul II in Fairbanks, Alaska, on May 2, 1984. Reagan White House Photographs via Wikimedia Commons.

Why rejoice in suffering? Why call the darkest day “Good Friday?” Because we are the Easter people and Alleluia is our song.

“I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,” (Colossians 1:24).

Our most devout friends struggle with the idea of “rejoicing in suffering.” But it’s a key reason Christianity keeps spreading — and growing globally:

• New research shows 66 percent of Americans “made a personal commitment to Jesus that is still important,” a 12-percentage-point jump since 2021.
• Catholic dioceses across the nation are seeing between a 30 percent and a 70 percent rise in new converts coming into the Church at Easter Vigils.
• King of Kings, an animated Christian film based on a Charles Dickens story, is smashing box office records, crushing Disney. The Chosen, a crowd-funded TV show about Jesus, also does well at the Box Office.

Suffering and struggle are the key. The Greatest Story Ever Told shapes every other story: A birth, a death and a rebirth.