I found this text from Pope Benedict today and it meant a lot to me. Life is indeed mysterious; it is not at all about an "efficiency and well-being" that corresponds to our narrow expectations. We are made for so much more. We are made to belong to God, and we really can't imagine what this means. But He wants our questions to become prayers; He wants our suffering to become awareness of our need for Him, and it is there--even when we don't understand, and can do nothing except place ourselves in His hands--that He transforms us.
"It is in times of pain that the ultimate questions about the meaning of one’s life make themselves acutely felt. If human words seem to fall silent before the mystery of evil and suffering, and if our society appears to value life only when it corresponds to certain standards of efficiency and well-being, the word of God makes us see that even these moments are mysteriously 'embraced' by God’s love. Faith born of an encounter with God’s word helps us to realize that human life deserves to be lived fully, even when weakened by illness and pain. God created us for happiness and for life, whereas sickness and death came into the world as a result of sin (cf. Wis. 2:23-24). Yet the Father of life is mankind’s physician par excellence, and he does not cease to bend lovingly over suffering humanity. We contemplate the culmination of God’s closeness to our sufferings in Jesus himself, the Word incarnate. He suffered and died for us. By his passion and death he took our weakness upon himself and totally transformed it."
Benedict XVI, Verbum Domini 106
