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Christian Quotes on Suffering with Patience / Longanimity
Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves."
I read these great thoughts of the saints and think, really? I am supposed to really accept that this is how God wants it? Suffer to gain happiness? What sort of weird thinking is that? The only answer is He did it so go with it. He said so, so quit thinking like a man. But I am a man!
Christian Quotes on Suffering with Patience / Longanimity
Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth—in a word, to know himself—so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves."
- Pope John Paul II
"Some psychologists argue that the idea of God is a response to our emotional needs, but this presumption is backwards. Our emotional fluctuations are a psychological response to our lack of love for God. If God is everything, what else could we possibily want?"
- Tarek Saab, Gut Check
"Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness."
--Mother Theresa
"The more importance given to any clear apprehensions [visions, locutions or feelings], the less capacity the soul has for entering the abyss of faith, where all else is absorbed."
--Saint John of the Cross
"Give yourself fully to God. He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness."
--Mother Theresa
"The more importance given to any clear apprehensions [visions, locutions or feelings], the less capacity the soul has for entering the abyss of faith, where all else is absorbed."
--Saint John of the Cross
"Faith is not a contract. Faith is surrender. If no other relationship in our experience is one of self-surrender, if it's all contractual, people won't know how to believe."
- Archbishop Francis George
"I believe though I do not comprehend, and I hold by faith what I cannot grasp with the mind."
- St. Bernard
"Faith means the fundamental response to the love that has offered itself up for me. It thus becomes clear that faith is ordered primarily to the inconceivability of God's love, which surpasses us and anticipates us. Love alone is credible; nothing else can be believed, and nothing else ought to be believed. This is the achievement, the work‚ of faith: to recognize this absolute prius, which nothing else can surpass; to believe that there is such a thing as love, absolute love, and that there is nothing higher or greater than it."
- Fr. Hans Urs Von Balthasar
"Reason's last step is the recognition that there are an infinite number of things which are beyond it."
- St. Blaise Pascal
"Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods."
- C.S. Lewis
"That the universe was formed by a fortuitous concourse of atoms, I will no more believe than that the accidental jumbling of the alphabet would fall into a most ingenious treatise of philosophy."
--Jonathan Swift
"Truth is not determined by a majority vote."
- Pope Benedict XVI
"Socialism is the religion people get when they lose their religion."
--Richard John Neuhaus
Faith, Reasoning, and Suffering:
Why does it all have to be so difficult? It drives me crazy. All you can do is just accept the way it is or go crazy.
I read these great thoughts of the saints and think, really? I am supposed to really accept that this is how God wants it? Suffer to gain happiness? What sort of weird thinking is that? The only answer is He did it so go with it. He said so, so quit thinking like a man. But I am a man!
As long as God's promises are true, then the greatest frustration is the devil's. Everything he does is used for good in the end. The greatest of all his plans, all His cruel demented twisted crap ends up in a greater good.
All things work for God. All of this mental and physical suffering is our
pathway. The devil mucks it up and the muck becomes pavement for us to get even closer to God. Then every suffering endured patiently is another battle won.
Job: Life on earth is warfare.
The problem is accepting, really accepting, like these saints did. Can I do this? This seems like gobbledygook sometimes, but insanity is the alternative. So God's reason must be true. God's rational mind must trump my irrational one. So, as long as I cannot accept these statements below, I am irrational.
"One cannot desire freedom from the Cross when one is especially chosen for the cross."
--Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein), who suffered the Nazi holocaust
"Apart from the cross, there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven."
--Saint Rose of Lima
"Let us fear more to be deprived of sufferings than a miser fears to lose his treasures."
--Saint Paul of the Cross
Comments on Good Resulting from Suffering:
How does God use suffering and adversity to do good? He allows it to purify our souls, aiding us in our understanding of Who created us and to Whom we shall turn for all we need. He is not selfish in wanting us to depend on Him. He is a loving Father, who wants us to know Him, who is Love. Resisting Him is no different from our children resisting us and the good we offer. Sometimes, we have to allow our children to suffer in order for them to know what is best.
Excerpt from Imitation of Christ
1.12 Why Adversity
The Twelfth Chapter
The Value of Adversity
It is good for us to have trials and troubles at times, for they often remind us that we are on probation and ought not to hope in any worldly thing. It is good for us sometimes to suffer contradiction, to be misjudged by men even though we do well and mean well. These things help us to be humble and shield us from vainglory. When to all outward appearances men give us no credit, when they do not think well of us, then we are more inclined to seek God Who sees our hearts. Therefore, a man ought to root himself so firmly in God that he will not need the consolations of men.
When a man of good will is afflicted, tempted, and tormented by evil thoughts, he realizes clearly that his greatest need is God, without Whom he can do no good. Saddened by his miseries and sufferings, he laments and prays. He wearies of living longer and wishes for death that he might be dissolved and be with Christ. Then he understands fully that perfect security and complete peace cannot be found on earth.
Comments on Good Resulting from Suffering:
How does God use suffering and adversity to do good? He allows it to purify our souls, aiding us in our understanding of Who created us and to Whom we shall turn for all we need. He is not selfish in wanting us to depend on Him. He is a loving Father, who wants us to know Him, who is Love. Resisting Him is no different from our children resisting us and the good we offer. Sometimes, we have to allow our children to suffer in order for them to know what is best.
Excerpt from Imitation of Christ
1.12 Why Adversity
The Twelfth Chapter
The Value of Adversity
It is good for us to have trials and troubles at times, for they often remind us that we are on probation and ought not to hope in any worldly thing. It is good for us sometimes to suffer contradiction, to be misjudged by men even though we do well and mean well. These things help us to be humble and shield us from vainglory. When to all outward appearances men give us no credit, when they do not think well of us, then we are more inclined to seek God Who sees our hearts. Therefore, a man ought to root himself so firmly in God that he will not need the consolations of men.
When a man of good will is afflicted, tempted, and tormented by evil thoughts, he realizes clearly that his greatest need is God, without Whom he can do no good. Saddened by his miseries and sufferings, he laments and prays. He wearies of living longer and wishes for death that he might be dissolved and be with Christ. Then he understands fully that perfect security and complete peace cannot be found on earth.
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