QUOTATION: Tribulation

God, who foresaw your tribulation, has specially armed you to go through it, not without pain but without stain.

--C.S. Lewis

QUOTATION: Why Jesus Suffered

Jesus could have saved us without suffering; but he chose rather to embrace a life of sorrow and contempt, deprived of every earthly consolation, and a death of bitterness and desolation, only to make us understand the love which he bore us, and the desire which he had that we should love him.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Incarnation, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ

QUOTATION: Afflicted by God

Let us therefore be comforted, when we see ourselves afflicted by God for our sins in this world; for it is a sign that he will show mercy to us in the next.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Incarnation, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ

QUOTATION: Resignation to the Holy Will

The masters of the spiritual life teach that, though the desire which certain souls have of suffering to give him pleasure is acceptable to him, he is yet more pleased with the conformity of those who wish for neither joy nor pain, but, in perfect resignation to his holy will, have no other desire than to fulfill whatever that will may be.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Way of Salvation and Perfection

QUOTATION: Conscience

It is well known that our conscience not only decides whether our actions are good or bad but also approves or disapproves of us.  When it disapproves it chastises and torments us with pangs of remorse.  And this is the fundamental temporal punishment within the purifying function willed by God.  Our pangs of conscience are a form of suffering that purifies.  They are more far-reaching in their inward effect than any temporal chastisement; for not only does a man really experience within himself the malice of sin, crime, injustice, injury, but he is also able to set himself free from it again --  an inner liberation but nonetheless a real one.

--Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, (Pope St. John Paul II), Sign of Contradiction, 1977

QUOTATION: Suffering

Let us understand that God is a physician, and that suffering is a medicine for salvation, not a punishment for damnation.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: The Suffering of Our Lord

I wonder maybe if our Lord does not suffer more from our indifference, than He did from the crucifixion.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Don't Get Used to It

We are in danger! As a society we have, little by little, become used to hearing and seeing distasteful news every day through the media.  What's worse, we have also become accustomed to seeing it and feeling it around us without calling forth any response, or at most, a superficial and noncommittal comment.  The wound is in the street, in the neighbourhood, in our homes, but like deaf and blind people, we live with the violence that kills, destroys families and neighbourhoods, gives rise to wars and conflicts in so many places, and we look at it as one more video.  The suffering of so many peaceful and innocent people has ceased to shock us; disregard for the rights of persons and whole peoples, poverty and misery, the rule of corruption, the drug assassin, forced child prostitution: it all becomes commonplace, and we pay without asking for a receipt, although sooner or later we are going to get the bill.

All of these realities, and many more, are not silent. They cry out to each and every one of us and speak to us of our limitations, our weakness, our sin-- in spite of the fact that we have gotten used to it.

Becoming used to something tells us seductively that there is no sense in trying to change it, that we cannot do anything in the face of it, that it's always been that way, and that, anyway, we'll survive it. We give up our opposition, allowing things 'to be what they are'-- or at least what some have decided they are.

--Pope Francis (Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio), Lenten Gesture of Solidarity, 2010

QUOTATION: Suffering

The glory of one who knows how to suffer is so great that Heaven, angels and men, and even God Himself, gaze on him with joy as a most glorious sight. And if the saints in Heaven desired anything, it would be to return to earth so as to bear some crosses.

--St. Louis de Montfort

QUOTATION: Sickness

There are some sick persons who, seeing themselves stretched on a bed of pain, complain, not so much indeed of their sorrows as of their inability to render Our Lord the services they were accustomed to render Him in health. In acting thus, they greatly deceive themselves, for one hour of suffering through love and submission to the will of God, is worth more than many days of labour with less love.

--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts

QUOTATION: Trials and Tribulations

We must patiently endure the tribulations of this life-- ill-health, sorrows, poverty, losses, bereavement of kindred, affronts, persecutions, and all that is disagree able. Let us invariably look on the trials of this world as signs of God's love towards us, and of his desire to save us in the world to come. And let us, moreover, be fully persuaded that the involuntary mortifications which God himself sends us are far more pleasing to him than those which are the fruit of our own choice.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: Wasted Pain

One of the greatest tragedies in the world is wasted pain. Pain without relation to the cross is like an unsigned check - without value. But once we have it countersigned with the Signature of the Saviour on the Cross, it takes on an infinite value.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, About Crosses

QUOTATION: Suffering Well

God considers not so much what we suffer as how we suffer. To suffer a great deal, but badly, is to suffer like the damned; to suffer much, even bravely, but for an evil cause, is to suffer as a disciple of the devil; to suffer little or much for God's sake is to suffer like a saint.

--St. Louis de Montfort, Letter to the Friends of the Cross

QUOTATION: Joy in Suffering

There is another love of the cross which I have called rational love and which is in the higher part of man, the mind. This love is entirely spiritual; it springs from the knowledge of how happy we can be in suffering for God, and so it can be experienced by the soul, to which it gives interior joy and strength. But although this rational and perceptible joy is good, in fact, excellent, it is not always necessary in order to suffer joyfully for God's sake.

--St. Louis de Montfort, Letter to the Friends of the Cross

QUOTATION: Does God Rejoice at Our Suffering?

But wherefore does Almighty God load us with so many crosses, and take pleasure in seeing us afflicted, reviled, persecuted, and ill-treated by the world ? Is he, perchance, a tyrant, whose cruel disposition makes him rejoice in our suffering? No: God is by no means a tyrant, nor cruel; he is all compassion and love towards us; suffice it to say, that he has died for us. He indeed does rejoice at our suffering, but for our good; inasmuch as, by suffering here, we are released hereafter from the debt of torments justly due from us to his divine justice; he rejoices in them, because they detach us from the sensual pleasures of this world: when a mother would wean her child, she puts gall on the breast, in order to create a disgust in the child; he rejoices in them, because we give him, by our patience and resignation in bearing them, a token of our love ; in fine, he rejoices in them, because they contribute to our increase of glory in heaven. Such are the reasons for which the Almighty, in his compassion and love towards us, is pleased at our suffering.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: Stop Complaining

Don’t complain if you suffer. It is the prized and valued stone that is polished.

--St. Josemaria Escriva

QUOTATION: Keep It to Yourself

Learn to suffer a little for the love of God without telling everyone about it.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: Why God Allows Bad Things to Happen

But God in His good Providence allows so many terrors, sorrows, and dangers to be put in our way by our enemy that He may break down our spirit, give us lowly hearts, and train us to submissiveness of mind and humility, so that we may never in the future feel any trust in our own prudence, but all entire trust in His Divine Protection.

--St. Francis Xavier

QUOTATION: Suffering

My daughter, suffering will be a sign to you that I am with you.

--Jesus Christ to St. Faustina, Diary

QUOTATION: When We Are Crushed

When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become.

--Henri Nouwen, Can You Drink the Cup?