Quotes about Suffering

You're coming to Him not to get Him to enter your world and change things to make you happy and give your life meaning and provide you with the blessings you want. You're now entering His world wanting to bring Him glory, to become a source of joy to your Papa, willing to endure whatever suffering is required to make that happen.

Is it thy will that I should wax and wane, Barter my cloth of gold for hodden grey, And at thy pleasure weave that web of pain Whose brightest threads are each a wasted day?

All the science of the Saints is included in these two things: To do, and to suffer. And whoever had done these two things best, has made himself most saintly.

We see his smile of love even when others see nothing but the black hand of death smiting our best beloved.

God's goodness is not a cosmic force but a specific act of compassion. We do not know it as it is but as it happens. To mention an example, "Rabbi Meir said: When a human being suffers what does the Shechinah say? My head is too heavy for Me; My arm is too heavy for Me. And if God is so grieved over the blood of the wicked that is shed, how much more so over the blood of the righteous.

When you have His joy in your heart, it doesn't necessarily mean your pain or hurt will be taken away. It means you'll be able to bear it.

Must being in love always mean being in pain?

Jesus' call to bear the cross places all who follow him in the community of the forgiveness of sins. Forgiving sins is the Christ-suffering required of his disciples. It is required of all Christians.

The Cross is not the terrible end of a pious happy life. Instead, it stands at the beginning of community with Jesus Christ. Whenever Christ calls us, his call leads us to death.

The activity will prove to be "peculiar" by leading the active person into Christ's own passion. This activity itself is perpetual suffering and enduring. In it, Christ is suffered by his disciple. If this is not the case, it is not the activity Jesus intended. In this way, the "extraordinary" is the fulfilling of the law, the keeping of the commandments.

There remains an experience of incomparable value. We have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated in short, from the perspective of those who suffer. Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior. Christians are called to compassion and to action.

Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering.