According to the Gospels, inspired by the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ did not avoid physical suffering on the cross, but rather embraced it as part of his mission to redeem humanity. But can God ease or irradicate the suffering, both physical and mental, of some human beings on Earth if they pray for it or have ‘Road to Damascus’ moment?

I’m reminded of this when the then atheist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008) was sent to the Gulag for offending tyrant Joseph Stalin. When Solzhenitsyn was working in the campground, he observed that prisoners in the Gulag who maintained their faith in God often experienced a greater sense of hope and resilience. It looked like faith provided them with a source of strength that helped them endure the extreme hardships of the horrors of the Gulag.

This contrast between those who believed, and those who did not, made Solzhenitsyn ponder on  the profound impact that spiritual beliefs can have on a person’s ability to cope with adversity in such a hostile environment.

One day, Solzhenitsyn became extremely exhausted in the freezing Siberian prison campground. He was so worn-out, that he dropped his shovel, slumped onto a bench and waited for a guard to beat him to death. This is what happened to other prisoners when they fell in the camp due to exhaustion.

However, a frail fellow prisoner approached Solzhenitsyn and scratched the sign of the Cross in the mud, then he quickly walked away. As Solzhenitsyn stared at those two lines scratched in the clay, the message of the Cross began to relieve his despair and give him strength.

In a brief moment, he discovered that the initial physical hard life in the camp improved his spiritual vision. And if epiphenomenalism were true, that the mind and brain are the same thing, then Solzhenitsyn would have remained on the ground like a crashed car, thus beaten to death by a guard. But through the power of the Cross, anything was possible; so, he picked up his shovel and slowly went back to work and lived to renew his faith in God, rid his body of cancer, win the Nobel Peace Prize, and tell his story in some of the most dramatically profound volumes of non-fiction in world history (The Gulag Archipelago).

On finding God, again, he said (quoted from the above book):

Bless you prison, bless you for being in my life. For there, lying upon the rotting prison straw, I came to realize that the object of life is not prosperity as we are made to believe, but the maturity of the human soul.

Many centuries prior to the great Solzhenitsyn, Joan of Arc was executed by burning at the stake on May 30, 1431, in Rouen, France. She was aged 19 years old at the time and had been wrongly convicted of heresy by a pro-English ecclesiastical court: Why Was Joan of Arc Executed in 1431? | TheCollector

During her execution, it is reported that Joan did not scream in pain as she was being burnt to death. Instead, she called out the name “Jesus.” Could this spiritual meditative state have helped her endure the unbearable pain of her execution without screaming? It has been proved that the mind can ease physical pain, as in the case of placebo tablets, so it’s quite plausible for believers in Christ Jesus to lessen our sufferings in times of need if we reach out to Him to do so.

As for blanking out extreme mental suffering anticipating one’s beheading, one should reflect on the Martyrs of Compiègne.On July 17, 1794, during the Reign of Terror in France, sixteen Discalced Carmelite nuns from Compiègne were executed by guillotine at the Place du Trône Renversé. The reason that the nuns were beheaded is because they were condemned for their religious beliefs and their refusal to abandon their vows during the revolutionary government’s crackdown on religious institutions and Catholic clerics.

As they were being led to their execution, the nuns sang hymns, including the Salve Regina and Veni Creator Spiritus. Think about it: Singing hymns joyfully in the face of having one’s head chopped off. For those who celebrate the French Revolution, Solzhenitsyn said we should mourn Bastille Day, as tens of thousands of Christians were slaughtered. It’s impact today is visible in the halls of academia, corridors of political power, and the aggressively tyranny of Woke ideology.

Regarding ideology and sharing one’s faith, The Christian Post ran a story about the plight of a North Korean Christian tortured for sharing her faith while imprisoned in one of the country’s notorious labor camps. Hea Woo revealed how the Lord spoke to her during a particularly brutal beating, giving her the strength to survive. You can read about it here: North Korean Christian Imprisoned for Faith Shares Powerful Words God Spoke to Her Amid Torture | World.

Hea Woo said:

I was able to bear all the sufferings at the time… I was taken back to my cell and heard the really loud, audible voice of the Lord. It said: ‘My beloved daughter, you walked on water today.’ It was a really loud strong audible voice but no one else heard… I had to really thank Him that He was there with me. After that day I didn’t get tortured. The Lord protected me.

Ending with some comic relief, perhaps one of the funniest stories of God easing a person’s pain is that of St Lawrence the Deacon (AD 225-258) when he told his executioners: “You can turn me over, I’m done on this side,” as they roasted him alive on a huge hot gridiron.