The early Christians rejoiced when they were deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the Church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles o popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.

Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear. To be a Christian one must take up his cross, with all its difficulties and agonizing and tension-packed content, and carry it until that very cross leaves its mark upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way which comes only through suffering.

For the first time since her return, she felt pain, a violent pain, but it made her feel alive, because it was worth feeling.

No happy person can be quite so impervious to pain (Gail Wynand to Dominique Francon)

The cross reminds us that there is no true love without suffering, there is no gift of life without pain.

Love sweetens pain; and when one loves God, one suffers for His sake with joy and courage.

Love and sacrifice are closely linked, like the sun and the light. We cannot love without suffering and we cannot suffer without love.

What we desperately do want to avoid is not merely suffering but suffering without meaning.

I thought I am kissing pain and pain belongs to You as happiness never does. I love You in Your pain. I could almost taste metal and salt in the skin, and I thought, How good you are. You might have killed us with happiness, but You let us be with You in pain.

So live real good, and get beat up real bad. Dance until they kill you, and then we'll dance some more. That's how this thing seems to work.

Shall I tell you the difference between you and your statue? No. But I want to. It's startling to see the same elements used in two compositions with opposite themes. Everything about you in that statue is the theme of exaltation. But your own theme is suffering. Suffering? I'm not conscious of having shown that. You haven't. That's what I meant. No happy person can be quite so impervious to pain.

For one pain endured with joy, we shall love the good God more forever.