Suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of scarifice.

Joy is not the opposite of suffering. If it were, a person practiced in joy could crowd out pain because one couldn't exist with the other. Instead, joy can actually be a companion to suffering.

This was Paul's joy in suffering and shame: "that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead" (Philippians 3:10—11). Notice how this affects your shameful past. It will still hurt at times, but shame will lose its power. The very event that made you an outcast is the one that gives you insight into the mind of Christ.

Jesus suffered, and Jesus was dearly loved as the only Son of the Father. When we suffer what seems like endless pain, it is hard to believe that God loves us, but Jesus' suffering proves that it can be true.

Jesus was called to throw himself on the wheel of world history, so that, even though it crushed him, it might start to turn in the opposite direction. Tom Wright, The Lord and His Prayer (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1996), 69.

For whoso dies for Christ, he is conqueror and is delivered from all misery and attains the eternal joy to which may it please our Saviour to bring us all.

It's not easy having a good time! Even smiling makes my face ache!

The Crucified One is God's standing solidarity with the suffering, the tragedy, and the disaster of all time, and God's promise that it will not have the final word. The Risen One is God's final word about the universe and what God plans to do with all suffering.

Following Jesus is a vocation to share the fate of God for the life of the world. To allow what God for some reason allows—and uses. And to suffer ever so slightly what God suffers eternally. Often, this has little to do with believing the right things about God—beyond the fact that God is love itself.

Any kind of authentic God experience will usually feel like love or suffering, or both. It will connect you to Full Reality at ever-new breadths, and depths "until God will be all in all" (1 Corinthians 15:28).

The Prayer of the sick person is his patience and his acceptance of his sickness for the love of Jesus Christ. Make sickness itself a prayer, for there is none more powerful, save martyrdom!

So Jesus in the throes of his Passion is an image of hope: God is on the side of those who suffer.