Quotes about Suffering

Being disguised under the disfigurement of an ugly crucifixion and death, the Christ upon the cross is paradoxically the clearest revelation of who God is.

Sweet is true love that is given in vain, and sweet is death that takes away pain.

Death reveals that the world is not as it should be but that it stands in need of redemption. Christ alone is the conquering of death.

I'm Catholic and I can't commit suicide, but I plan to drink myself to death.

Every call of Christ leads into death.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

There slowly grew up in me an unshakable conviction that we have no right to inflict suffering and death on another living creature, unless there is some unavoidable necessity for it.

I gave him my heart, and he took and pinched it to death; and flung it back to me. People feel with their hearts, Ellen, and since he has destroyed mine, I have not power to feel for him.

Oh God, God, why did you take such trouble to force this creature out of its shell if it is now doomed to crawl back -- to be sucked back -- into it?

We feel pain as an outrage; Jesus did too, which is why he performed miracles of healing. In Gethsemane, he did not pray, "Thank you for this opportunity to suffer," but rather pled desperately for an escape. And yet he was willing to undergo suffering in service of a higher goal. In the end he left the hard questions ("if there be any other way . . .") to the will of the Father, and trusted that God could use even the outrage of his death for good.

On a small scale, person-to-person, Jesus encountered the kinds of suffering common to all of us. And how did he respond? Avoiding philosophical theories and theological lessons, he reached out with healing and compassion. He forgave sin, healed the afflicted, cast out evil, and even overcame death.

The first step in helping a suffering person is to acknowledge that the pain is valid, and worthy of a sympathetic response.