Our society arbitrarily defines health as the capacity for work and the capacity for enjoyment, but "true health is something quite different. True health is the strength to live, the strength to suffer, and the strength to die. Health is not a condition of my body; it is the power of my soul to cope with the varying condition of that body.

Those who suffer can respond to the call of the gospel with a certain abandonment and uncomplicated totality because they have so little to lose and are ready for anything.

That this world spoiled by evil and suffering still exists at all is an example of God's mercy, not his cruelty.

Modern books on pain make a sharp contrast. Their authors assume that the amount of evil and suffering in the world cannot be matched with the traditional view of a good and loving God. God is thus bumped from a "friend of the court" position to the box reserved for the defendant. "How can you possibly justify yourself, God?" these angry moderns seem to say.

We need a renewed awareness of death, yes. But we need far more. We need a faith, in the midst of our groaning, that death is not the last word, but the next to last. What is mortal will be swallowed up by life.

You are not a human being in search of a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being immersed in a human experience.

instead of allowing the enormity of the world's sufferings to make me unhappy, I have allowed it to increase the depth of my gratitude for the blessed life that I have been allowed to lead. You can look at the amount of suffering in the world and become bitter (this world stinks), cynical (nothing matters, it's all just a roulette game), or hedonistic (with all this suffering, I'll rack up all the fun I can) — or you can be grateful for your blessings.

No one can rationally believe doing God's will guarantees one will, for example, never develop cancer or die in an earthquake. If that were the case, we would have to draw the irrational and cruel conclusion that anyone who dies prematurely was being punished by God—or the equally irrational conclusion that all those who live long and healthy lives have lived God-centered lives.

As the Psalmist put it millennia ago, 'Those who sow in tears will reap in joy.' Many people, however, believe that they can both sow and reap without tears.

The believer has to account for the existence of unjust suffering; the atheist has to account for the existence of everything else.

Somewhere deep inside us we seem to know that we are destined for something better than strife.

I realize now that God has been with me every step of my life - through the suffering.