Suffering for her is such an evil that it contains no good.
I have not slept through an entire night since before January 3rd. Because of nocturnal asthma, I sleep maybe one and a half hours and then have to sit up. Of course, the lack of sleep slows me down.
So, my typical night is about five hours to six hours of sleep but only in increments of one and a half hours at a stretch.
Nocturnal asthma and diurnal asthma create fatigue. Coughing is not the only symptom. One wheezes, has a tightening of the chest, shortness of breath and for some of us, mucus.
After so many nights of restlessness, one is faced with the reality that God is allowing suffering on a daily basis. But, unlike the smug friends of Job, the Catholic can answer the question of why illness.
Illness is a direct result of Original Sin. We all experience illness and death as a consequence of the Sin of Adam. Our first parents were free of illness, decay and death, but that first disobedience brought about the decline and weakness of the body as well as the soul.
The CCC is clear on the consequences of Original Sin. Suffering as a consequence of Original Sin is only the first reason for illness. But, when our First Parents left the Garden of Eden, they took into their new world a flawed body.
Man's first sin
397 Man, tempted by the devil, let his trust in his Creator die in his heart and, abusing his freedom, disobeyed God's command. This is what man's first sin consisted of.278 All subsequent sin would be disobedience toward God and lack of trust in his goodness.
398 In that sin man preferred himself to God and by that very act scorned him. He chose himself over and against God, against the requirements of his creaturely status and therefore against his own good. Constituted in a state of holiness, man was destined to be fully "divinized" by God in glory. Seduced by the devil, he wanted to "be like God", but "without God, before God, and not in accordance with God".279
399 Scripture portrays the tragic consequences of this first disobedience. Adam and Eve immediately lose the grace of original holiness.280 They become afraid of the God of whom they have conceived a distorted image - that of a God jealous of his prerogatives.281
400 The harmony in which they had found themselves, thanks to original justice, is now destroyed: the control of the soul's spiritual faculties over the body is shattered; the union of man and woman becomes subject to tensions, their relations henceforth marked by lust and domination.282 Harmony with creation is broken: visible creation has become alien and hostile to man.283 Because of man, creation is now subject "to its bondage to decay".284 Finally, the consequence explicitly foretold for this disobedience will come true: man will "return to the ground",285 for out of it he was taken. Death makes its entrance into human history.286
401 After that first sin, the world is virtually inundated by sin There is Cain's murder of his brother Abel and the universal corruption which follows in the wake of sin. Likewise, sin frequently manifests itself in the history of Israel, especially as infidelity to the God of the Covenant and as transgression of the Law of Moses. And even after Christ's atonement, sin raises its head in countless ways among Christians.287 Scripture and the Church's Tradition continually recall the presence and universality of sin in man's history:
- What Revelation makes known to us is confirmed by our own experience. For when man looks into his own heart he finds that he is drawn towards what is wrong and sunk in many evils which cannot come from his good creator. Often refusing to acknowledge God as his source, man has also upset the relationship which should link him to his last end, and at the same time he has broken the right order that should reign within himself as well as between himself and other men and all creatures.288
- to be continued...