Quotes about Suffering

When you have learnt this, you will know that Christ is necessary for you, since He has suffered and risen again for you, that, believing on Him, you might by this faith become another man, all your sins being remitted, and you being justified by the merits of another, namely of Christ alone.

wherever answer, deliverance, or salvation are mentioned in Scripture, there we must be quick to understand that cross and suffering are there before.

You must die if you would live under this King. You must bear the cross and the hatred of the whole world. You must not flee from ignominy, poverty, hunger, and thirst, in other words, all the evil that floods the earth.

He has come that they might reject their works; but this is a thing they cannot suffer, and they reject Him.

Begin with Christ. He came down to earth, lived among men, suffered, was crucified, and then He died, standing clearly before us, so that our hearts and eyes may fasten upon Him. Thus we shall be kept from climbing into heaven in a curious and futile search after the nature of God.

For it is the explicit statement of Sacred Scripture that one who is outside of tribulation is outside the condition and hope of salvation.

In all evils we must confess that God is the author and say: "Since You have done it, we must be silent and dumb," lest we murmur or blaspheme against Him. And He must be implored to remove the evil. For he who does not know who brings in the evil becomes impatient in vain and attempts to banish it. It is as if a spear were hurled from an unknown place, and the one struck is angry in vain.

VIII. Beyond all this is the highest stage of faith, when; God punishes the conscience not only with temporal sufferings, but with death, hell, and sin, and refuses grace and mercy, as though it were His will to condemn and to be angry eternally. This few men experience, but David cries out in Psalm vi, "O Lord, rebuke me not in Thine anger." To believe at such times that God, in His mercy, is pleased with us, is the highest work that can be done by and in the creature;

He is wonderful in His Holy One because He brings Him into tribulation and thus crowns Him.

It is indeed pitiful that a monk who does nothing else night and day except chastise his body achieves nothing by this diligence than to be cast into the flames of hell.

It is necessary for the saints to be disciplined in this way, to descend into hell and the abyss, and to be recalled from there into heaven. For

You will thus wrong your faith, which alone bestows all things on you, and the increase of which, either by working or by suffering, is alone to be cared for.