In addition to these quotes below, also see these links on the subject:
Suffering roots out wrongful pride
Christian Quotes on Faith & Reason & Suffering
Inspiring message from Pope Benedict XVI
Inspiring message from Saint Faustina Kowalska on Suffering with Patience leads to strength
The sufferings of this life cannot be compared to the glory that will be revealed in us in the life to come, alleluia.
--Romans 8:18
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| "Many of us spend our whole lives running from feeling with the mistaken belief that you cannot bear the pain. But you have already borne the pain. What you have not done is feel all you are beyond the pain." - St. Bartholomew |
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"For one pain endured with joy, we shall love the good God more forever."
- St. Therese of Lisieux
“There is no ideal situation. You can’t get rid of your cross.”
--Mother Angelica
'The mercy of God is hidden in sufferings not of our choice; and if we accept such sufferings patiently, they bring us to repentance and deliver us from everlasting punishment.'
--St. Mark the Ascetic
True works of God always meet opposition and are marked by suffering. (Diary of St. Faustina # 270)
"There is no evil to be faced that Christ does not face with us. There is no enemy that Christ has not already conquered. There is no cross to bear that Christ has not already borne for us, and does not now bear with us."
- Pope John Paul II
Say not, "Why were the former days better than these?" For it is not from wisdom that you ask this.
--Ecclesiastes 7:10
"Apart from the cross, there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven."
- St. Rosa de Lima
"Acceptance is not submission; it is acknowledgement of the facts of a situation. Then deciding what you're going to do about it."
--Kathleen Casey Theisen
"Adaptability: A wise man adapts himself to circumstances as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it."
--unknown
"The comedy of man survives the tragedy of man."
- G.K. Chesterton
Ask God for love of crosses in your life
"How beautiful it is to offer ourselves every morning in sacrifice to the good God, and to accept everything in expiation of our sins! We must ask for the love of crosses; then they become sweet.
I tried it for four or five years. I was well calumniated, well contradicted, well knocked about. Oh, I had crosses indeed! I had almost more than I could carry! Then I took to asking for love of crosses, and I was happy. I said to myself, truly there is no happiness but in this! We must never think from whence crosses come: they come from God. It is always God who gives us this way of proving our love to Him."--Saint Jean Vianney
''If we suffer, we shall also reign with Him' (II Tim. 2.12). And yet many even today recoil from these words and go away, saying by their action if not with their lips, 'This is a hard saying; who can hear it?' (John 6.60). 'A generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit cleaveth not steadfastly unto God' (Ps. 78.8), but chooseth rather to trust in uncertain riches, it is disturbed at the very name of the Cross, and counts the memory of the Passion intolerable. How can such sustain the burden of that fearful sentence, 'Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels'? 'On whomsoever that stone shall fall it will grind him to powder' (Luke 20.18); but 'the generation of the faithful shall be blessed' (Ps. 112.2), since, like the apostle, they labor that whether present or absent they may be accepted of the Lord (II Cor. 5.9). At the last day they too shall hear the Judge pronounce their award, 'Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world' (Matt. 25.34).
In that day those who set not their hearts aright will feel, too late, how easy is Christ's yoke, to which they would not bend their necks and how light His burden, in comparison with the pains they must then endure.'
--St. Bernard of Clairvaux
"Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ."
- C.S. Lewis
'When the afflictions of this life overcome us, let us encourage ourselves to bear them patiently by the hope of heaven.'
--St. Alphonsus Maria de Liguori
“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
“Only those who have gone through the tunnel can know how dark the darkness can be.”
--Saint Therese of Liseux
'The first time that I had these recollections with a vision, it seemed to me that I saw, on a sudden, Our Lord with a heavy cross on His shoulders, when He invited me to take a part in that precious treasure. This invitation was given by communication rather than by words. At that instant I felt a strong desire of sufferings, and it seemed that the Lord planted the cross in my heart, giving me to understand the value of suffering. This understanding I received in the following manner. It appeared as if all sorts of torments were represented to me, and, at the same moment, I saw them transformed into jewels and precious stones, all of which were made in the figure of the cross. During this time, I was given to know that God wished pure suffering in me; and then the vision disappeared. When I came to myself, I felt a violent pain in my head, which has never since left me, and so eager was my desire of suffering, that I would willingly have faced every torment that can be conceived. From that moment I have ever had in my mouth these words, "The cross and sufferings are jewels and joys.."'
St. Veronica Guiliani
“There could not be a surer sign of God’s love for you than this pain which He has sent to you. Adore the divine will.”
--Saint Paul of the Cross
“They are happy who, putting all their trust in the cross, have plunged into the water of life.”
--A second century Christian, from Liturgy of the Hours (The Divine Office)
“There is no ideal situation. You can’t get rid of your crosses.”
--Mother Angelica (EWTN)
“Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.”
--Oscar Wilde
“God’s way of dealing with those whom He intends to admit soonest after this life into the possession of His everlasting glory is to purify them in this world by the greatest afflictions and trials.”
--Saint Ignatius of Loyola
“By day and 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.”
--Said by Jesus to St. Faustina on the sufferings of a priest for God’s work to be carried out.
“There are more tears shed over answered prayers than over unanswered prayers.”
--Saint Teresa of Avila
“...it is one’s response to suffering that brings either freedom or bondage.”
--Neal Lozano
“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 our 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.”
--Saint Jean Marie Baptiste de Vianney, the Cure of Ars
“We must sacrifice ourselves to God, each day, and in everything we do, accepting all that happens to us for the sake of the Word, imitating His passion by our sufferings, and honoring His blood by shedding our own. We must be ready to be crucified.”
--Saint Gregory Nazianen
And 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." - Pope John Paul II
"Each man, in his suffering, can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ."
-Pope John Paul II
"The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not."
--C.S. Lewis
"The distinctive mark of the Christian, today more than ever, must be love for the poor, the weak, the suffering."
--Pope John Paul II
"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, wanting us to have life and to have it in abundance."
--Pope John Paul II
'Who could ever understand fully that eternal weight of glory which a single moment spent in cheerfully carrying a cross obtains for us? Who could understand the glory gained in Heaven by a year, and sometimes a whole lifetime, of crosses and suffering.'
--St. Louis Marie de Montfort
"Comfort in tribulation can be secured only on the sure ground of faith holding as true the words of Scripture and the teaching of the Catholic Church."
- St. Thomas More
"He was strong as He was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lesson and by His example, He traced the path of happiness in heaven: the royal way of the Cross."
--Pope St. Pius X
'To suffer is not enough: the evil one and the world have their martyrs. We must suffer and carry our cross in the footsteps of Christ.'
--St. Louis Marie de Montfort
St. Louis de Montfort on Friend of the Cross/Suffering
To the right, the little flock that follows Jesus can speak only of tears, penance, prayer and contempt for worldly things. Sobbing in their grief, they can be heard repeating: "Let us suffer, let us weep, let us fast, let us pray, let us hide, let us humble ourselves, let us be poor, let us mortify ourselves, for he who has not the spirit of Christ, the spirit of the Cross, is none of Christ's. Those who are Christ's have crucified their flesh with its concupiscence. We must be conformed to the image of Jesus Christ or else be damned!" "Be brave, " they keep saying to each other, "be brave, for if God is for us, in us and leading us, who dare be against us? The One Who is dwelling within us is stronger than the one who is in the world; no servant is above his master; one moment of light tribulation worketh an eternal weight of glory; there are fewer elect than man may think; only the brave and daring take heaven by storm; the crown is given only to those who strive lawfully according to the Gospel, not according to the fashion of the world. Let us put all our strength into the fight, and run very fast to reach the goal and win the crown." Friends of the Cross spur each other on with such divine words.
