Quotes - The Offering of Suffering
In the same way that a powerful medicine cures an illness, so illness itself is a medicine to cure passion. And there is much profit of soul in bearing illness quietly and giving thanks to God. - St. Amma Syncletica
God had one son on earth without sin, but never one without suffering. - St. Augustine
Trials and tribulations offer us a chance to make reparation for our past faults and sins. On such occasions the Lord comes to us like a physician to heal the wounds left by our sins. Tribulation is the divine medicine. - St. Augustine
Let no one be ashamed of the cross by which Christ has redeemed the world. None of us must be afraid to suffer for the sake of justice or doubt the fulfillment of the promises, for it is through toil that we come to rest and through death that we pass to life. - St. Leo the Great
Bodily and spiritual affliction are the surest sign of Divine predilection. Gratitude for suffering is a precious jewel for our heavenly crown… Man should always firmly believe that God sends just that trial which is most beneficial for him. - St. Gertrude the Great
In times of desolation, God conceals Himself from us so that we can discover for ourselves what we are without Him. - St. Margaret of Cortona
It is only through shadows that one comes to know the light. - St. Catherine of Siena
If God gives you an abundant harvest of trials, it is a sign of great holiness which He desires you to attain. Do you want to become a great saint? Ask God to send you many sufferings. The flame of Divine Love never rises higher than when fed with the wood of the Cross, which the infinite charity of the Savior used to finish His sacrifice. All the pleasures of the world are nothing compared with the sweetness found in the gall and vinegar offered to Jesus Christ. That is, hard and painful things endured for Jesus Christ and with Jesus Christ. - St. Ignatius of Loyola
If only mortals would learn how great it is to possess divine grace, how beautiful, how noble, how precious. How many riches it hides within itself, how many joys and delights! No one would complain about his cross or about troubles that may happen to him, if he would come to know the scales on which they are weighed when they are distributed to men. - St. Rose of Lima
What a weakness it is to love Jesus Christ only when He Caresses us, and to be cold immediately once He afflicts us. This is not true love. Those who love thus, love themselves too much to love God with all their heart. - St. Margaret Mary Alacoque
We always find that those who walked closest to Christ were those who had to bear the greatest trials. - St. Teresa of Ávila
Everything seems to me to pass so quickly that we must concentrate on how to die rather than on how to live. How sweet it is to die if one has lived on the Cross with Christ. - St. Teresa of Ávila
The purest suffering bears and carries in its train the purest understanding. - St. John of the Cross
Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved. -
St. John of the Cross
Would that men might come at last to see that it is quite impossible to reach the thicket of the riches and wisdom of God except by first entering the thicket of much suffering, in such a way that the soul finds there its consolation and desire. The soul that longs for divine wisdom chooses first, and in truth, to enter the thicket of the cross. - St. John of the Cross
In suffering, love, and in loving, suffer! - Bl. Mary of Jesus
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! - St. Francis de Sales
Many would be willing to have afflictions provided that they not be inconvenienced by them. - St. Francis de Sales
To have everything go along smoothly, according to one's desires and without having anything to suffer for the love of God should be considered a great misfortune not only for individuals, but also for the Congregation as a whole. Yes, you may be certain that a person or Congregation that does not suffer and is praised by the whole world is heading for a fall! We must remember that all incapacity and distress is sent to us by God. Life and death, health and sickness, are all ordered by Him; and in whatever form they come, it is always to help us and for our good. - St. Vincent de Paul
When it is all over you will not regret having suffered; rather you will regret having suffered so little, and suffered that little so badly. - St. Sebastian Valfre
The brightest ornaments in the crown of the blessed in heaven are the sufferings which they have borne patiently on earth. - St. Alphonsus Liguori
If you embrace all things in this life as coming from the hands of God, and even embrace death to fulfill His holy will, assuredly you will die a saint. - St. Alphonsus Liguori
"Can you expect to go to Heaven for nothing? Did not our dear Savior track the whole way to it with His blood and tears?" - St. Elizabeth Ann Seton
In order to get to Heaven, we must suffer. Our Lord shows us the way in the person of Simon the Cyrenian; He calls His friends to carry His cross after Him. The saints suffered everything with joy, patience, and perseverance, because they loved. As for us, we suffer with anger, vexation, and weariness, because we do not love. If we loved God, we should love the crosses, we should wish for them, we should take pleasure in them… We should be happy to be able to suffer for the love of Him who lovingly suffered for us… We must ask for the love of crosses; then they will become sweet. - St. John Vianney
We must suffer in order to go to God. We forget this truth far too often. - St. Madeleine Sophie Barat
Christian perfection consists in three things: praying heroically, working heroically, and suffering heroically. - St. Anthony Mary Claret
It is loving the Cross that one finds one heart, for Divine Love cannot live without suffering. - St. Bernadette
It is not enough to take the cross in our hands and kiss it. We must carry it. - St. John Bosco
I confess to you, my dear brother, the cemetery and the hut of the dying are my best meditation books, as well as for the benefit of my own soul as in view of preparing my instructions. - St. Damien of Molokai
I make myself a leper with the lepers to gain all to Jesus Christ. - St. Damien of Molokai
Suffering is the very best gift He has to give us. He gives it only to His chosen friends. - St. Thérèse of Lisieux
Look Daughter, and learn how to love" and He showed me His five open wounds. "Do you see this cross, these thorns, these nails, these bruises, these tears, these wounds, this blood? They are all works of love; of infinite love. Do you see how much I have loved you? Do you really want to love Me? Then first learn how to suffer. It is by suffering that one learns how to love. - Jesus to St. Gemma Galgani
My child, I have need of victims; strong victims, in order to appease the just anger of my Divine Father. I need souls who, by their sufferings, trials and sacrifices, make amends for sinners and for their ingratitude. Oh, if I could make all understand how angry My Father is by the impious world! - Jesus to St. Gemma Galgani
During this same year of 1896 another desire began to grow in me. I began to feel an ever greater yearning to love Jesus Crucified very much, and at the same time a desire to suffer with him and to help him in his sufferings. - St. Gemma Galgani
I experienced a new sorrow, and thinking of the infinite love of Jesus for us, and all the sufferings that He had undergone for our salvation, I fainted and fell to the floor, and I remained thus for several hours. All that happened to me during these times of prayer brought me such great consolation, that although they [ecstasies] were prolonged for several hours, I was not at all tired. I continued to make a Holy Hour every Thursday, but sometimes it happened that it lasted until around 2:00 am, because I was with Jesus, and almost always He would give me a share in the grief that He suffered in the Garden at the sight of my many sins, and those of the entire world. It was such a deep sorrow that it could well be compared to the agony of death. After all this I would experience so sweet a calm and consolation that I had to give vent to it in tears. And these tears made me taste an incomprehensible love, and increased in me the desire to love Jesus, and to suffer for Him. - St. Gemma Galgani
Give Me souls who love Me in suffering, who find their joy on the Cross. My Heart thirsts for such a love, an unselfish love, an expiatory, crucified love, a sound love such as it may be said no longer exists on earth. Yet it is the only true love, the love which saves, purifies, and the love I require through My commandments. All other apparent loves do not satisfy Me; all other love is vain, artificial, often culpable, save the love which I have just shown you. - Jesus to Ven. Concepción Cabrera de Armida
I will be the altar upon which You offer Yourself - a victim in union with You and with all other priests - transforming myself into Yourself through suffering and through love, through purity and humility and above all, through loving passion for Your divine Father, so as to be able to say with my heart burning with celestial fire: "This is My Body; this is My Blood." - Ven. Concepción Cabrera de Armida
By day and by night My gaze is fixed upon him, and I permit these adversities in order to increase his merit. I do not reward for good results but for the patience and hardship undergone for My sake. - Jesus, speaking to St. Faustina about her spiritual director, Bl. Michael Sopocko.
Suffering is the greatest treasure on earth; it purifies the soul. In suffering, we learn who our true friend is. - St. Faustina
True love is measured by the thermometer of suffering. - St. Faustina
My likeness to Jesus must be through suffering and humility. - St. Faustina
Oh, if only the suffering soul knew how it is loved by God, it would die of joy and excess of happiness! Some day, we will know the value of suffering, but then we will no longer be able to suffer. The present moment is ours. - St. Faustina
I understood that these two years of interior suffering which I have undergone in submission to God's will in order to know it better have advanced me further in perfection than the previous ten years - St. Faustina
Sufferings, adversities, humiliations, failures and suspicions that have come my way are splinters that keep alive the fire of my love for You, O Jesus. - St. Faustina
If the angels were capable of envy, they would envy us for two things: one is the receiving of Holy Communion, and the other is suffering. - St. Faustina
Your temptations are from the devil and from Hell; but your sufferings and afflictions are from God and Heaven. - St. Pio of Pietrelcina
In order to attract us, the Lord grants us many graces that we believe can easily obtain Heaven for us. We do not know, however, that in order to grow, we need hard bread: the cross, humiliation, trials and denials. - St. Pio of Pietrelcina
If the soul would know the merit which one acquires in temptations suffered in patience and conquered, it would be tempted to say: "Lord, send me temptations." - St. Pio of Pietrelcina
Suffering is my daily bread, my delight. I suffer when I do not suffer if there is some instant in my life without suffering. Crosses are the jewels of the Spouse and I am jealous of them. Woe to whoever puts himself between me and the cross! - St. Pio of Pietrelcina
Love is the first ingredient in the relief of suffering - St. Pio of Pietrelcina
Love and sacrifice are closely linked, like the sun and the light. We cannot love without suffering and we cannot suffer without love. - St. Gianna Molla
Between the heathen world and the threefold God there is only one link, and that is the Cross of Christ. Yet when we move into this no-man's land and try afresh to twitch the threads that link the heathen world and the threefold God, should we still be surprised that we can only do it in the Cross of Christ? We must make ourselves resemble this Cross, bear it within ourselves, "always carrying in the body the death of Jesus", as St. Paul says of the preacher of the faith (2 Corinthians 4:10). This feeling of being torn asunder, which is a cross to us, this inability of our heart to carry within itself simultaneously love of the most holy Trinity and love of a world alienated from the Trinity, is precisely the death agony of the only begotten Son, an agony he calls on us to share. He who bore this division within himself in order to abolish it within himself, and who could only abolish it because he had previously borne it within himself---he reaches from one end to the other. Without leaving the bosom of the Trinity, he stretches out to the ultimate limit of human misery and fills the whole space in between. This stretching out of Christ, symbolized by the four directions of the Cross, is the mysterious expression of our own dismemberment and makes us like him. - Fr. Jean Daniélou, S.J.
In the lights of the Cross, suffering becomes sacred. - Bl. Paul VI
Jesus Christ has taken the lead on the way of the cross. He has suffered first. He does not drive us toward suffering but shares it with us. - St. John Paul II
Christ, through his own salvific suffering, is very much present in every human suffering, and can act from within that suffering by the powers of his Spirit of truth, his consoling spirit. - St. John Paul II
When you suffer with Christ, you show that you are blessed because, as the Lord himself tells us in the Gospel passage, you have not taken offense at him (Cf. Luke 7: 23). Jesus’ Passion and Crucifixion is not a stumbling block for you, but a source of joy and hope. Accepting your suffering in this way, you allow others to see the true dignity of the human person. You reveal a God who loves us so much that he became one of us in order to share our pain and sorrows. You make known the truth that God will transform death itself into a beautiful future where "he will wipe away every tear" (Revelation 21: 4) from our eyes. - St. John Paul II
Dear brothers and sisters, our entire lives are like this long night of struggle and prayer, spent in desiring and asking for God’s blessing, which cannot be grabbed or won through our own strength but must be received with humility from him as a gratuitous gift that ultimately allows us to recognize the Lord’s face. And when this happens, our entire reality changes; we receive a new name and God’s blessing. - Pope Benedict XVI
In the last analysis pain is the product and expression of Jesus Christ's being stretched out from being in God right down to the hell of "My God, why have you forsaken me?" Anyone who has stretched his existence so wide that he is simultaneously immersed in God and in the depths of the God-forsaken creature is bound to be torn asunder, as it were; such a one is truly "crucified". But this process of being torn apart is identical with love; it is the realization to the extreme (John 13:1) and the concrete expression of the breadth it creates. From this standpoint it should be possible to bring out clearly the true basis of meaningful devotion to the Passion; it should also become evident how devotion to the Passion and apostolic spirituality overlap. It should become evident that the apostolic element---service to man and in the world--- is permeated with the very essence of Christian mysticism and of Christian devotion to the Cross. The two do not impede each other; at the deepest level, each lives on the other. Thus it should now also be plain that with the Cross it is not a matter of an accumulation of physical pain, as if its redemptive value consisted of its involving the largest possible amount of physical torture. Why should God take pleasure in the suffering of his creature, indeed his own Son, or even see in it the currency with which reconciliation has to be purchased from him? The Bible and right Christian belief are far removed from such ideas. It is not pain as such that counts but the breadth of the love that spans existence so completely that it unites the distant and the near, bringing God-forsaken man into relation with God. It alone gives the pain an aim and a meaning. - Pope Benedict XVI
By saying “blessed are those who mourn”, Jesus does not intend to declare an unfortunate and burdensome condition in life to be happy. Suffering is not a value in itself, but a reality that Jesus teaches us to live with the correct attitude. - Pope Francis
To be good Christians you have to contemplate the suffering humanity of Jesus. “How can we bear witness? Contemplate Jesus. How can we forgive? Contemplate Jesus suffering. How can we not hate our neighbor? Contemplate Jesus suffering. How can we avoid gossiping about our neighbor? Contemplate Jesus suffering. There is no other way”. These virtues are the those of the Father, who forgives us always, and Our Lady, Our Mother, shares in these virtues too. - Pope Francis