Final answer:
God understands our suffering because He experienced it through Jesus Christ's humanity. The shift from seeing Jesus as a triumphant figure to one who embraced human suffering made Christ's experience relatable to people's own hardships.
Step-by-step explanation:
God truly understands our suffering since He experienced humanness and suffering in the person of Jesus Christ. During the later Middle Ages, a shift occurred in religious thought that emphasized Jesus Christ's humanity, contrasting earlier medieval representations that focused on His divinity and portrayed Him as immune to human pain. This was a response, in part, to the rise of new religious orders like the Franciscans, who promoted this understanding of Christ, and it resonated with the faithful because it emphasized a God who could relate to human suffering.
The depiction of a crucified Jesus who remained poised and triumphant, known as the 'Christus triumphans', gradually gave way to images of the 'Christus patiens' or the suffering Christ. These later images showed Jesus experiencing profound physical suffering on the cross, mirroring the pains of humanity. Such representations conveyed a relatable and compassionate Christ who not only knows about human anguish but has also lived through it.
This theological perspective sought to address the 'Problem of Suffering' by proposing that an all-knowing and all-powerful God is indeed aware of human distress and has entered into that experience. By identifying with human suffering through Jesus Christ, God demonstrates an intimate understanding of the hardship and tribulations faced by humans.