God is not the source of suffering. But he allows suffering to happen. As to why, that's one of the biggest questions in history and also one of the biggest mysteries of Christianity.
This was the nugget of wisdom I got from the priest's homily last September 30 (sorry, I forgot the name of the priest). The first part was not new; I've heard Fr. Manny, a Jesuit, say this one time. But the latter part, where it says that even the Catholic Church has no answer to why a benevolent God would allow suffering, was novel.
The first reading in that mass was about Job lamenting about his dreadful situation, specifically cursing the day of his birth. But, surprisingly, Job never got around to cursing God.
Unfortunately, the book of Job doesn't answer the question on suffering either. Instead, the final parts of the book exhorts us to put our faith and hope in God in our times of distress, to lift up our suffering to Him who knows everything.
This reminds me of a dialogue from the movie God on Trial. After Nazi soldiers begin herding Jewish prisoners into the gas chambers, a prisoner, Moche, asks the resident rabbi, "What do we do now?"
The answer? "Now, we pray."
There's no clear answer to why we suffer; the only thing we can do is to take solace in our God.
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