We can put up with suffering if it has some purpose. If sacrifice gives us gratification later on, we can take it. If doing without helps someone we love to have a little more, we can do it If pain now will lighten the pain of someone else later, we can handle it.

Suffering without purpose is harder to sustain. When suffering produces no earthly good, it is hard to understand. When someone inflicts suffering on us out of vengeance or hatred, it is hard to forgive. Some suffering is more difficult than other suffering.

Zechariah promised the people that God would pour out a spirit of grace, and that the inhabitants of Jerusalem would have a fountain to purify them from sin. But all this would come at a price - the price of suffering.

The gospels see in this passage a prophecy about Christ, pierced on the cross with the soldier’s lance, mourned as the firstborn, only-begotten Son of God.

The loss of Jesus on the cross is a suffering that would have been hard to bear - if it had no purpose. But it has lightened the loss of nations.