April 19

A person who does not understand the beneficence of suffering has not yet began leading a rational life, i.e. true life.

1

All of humankind’s great achievements are only possible under the condition of suffering. Jesus knew that this was something that even he had to expect, and he foresaw it all: the hatred of those whose power he had come to destroy, and their secret conspiracies, and their violence, and the ungrateful betrayal of the people whose sickness he was healing, whom in the desert of old society he had nourished with the heavenly bread of his word; he had foreseen even the cross, and his death, and being abandoned by his own followers, which was even more sorrowful than death itself. And this thought never left him, but it did not stop him for a minute. If his corporeal nature is pushing away “this cup,” his stronger will accepts it without hesitation. And in this he gives all those who are carrying on his task—all those who, like him, will have to toil for the salvation of the people, for their liberation from the yoke of delusion and evil—he gives them an example that should forever be remembered. If people want to reach the goal towards which Christ is leading them, then they must also walk the same path. Only by paying this price can people serve others. You want people to be true brothers, you are calling on them to follow the laws of their common nature, you are battling against all oppression, all lawlessness, all hypocrisy; you are calling on the kingdom of justice, duty, truth and love to come to earth—so how can those whose power is based on what is contrary to this not rise up against you? Are they really going to leave you to destroy their temple without a fight so that you can put up another in its place; an eternal temple, unlike theirs—for it is no longer a work of human hands—the foundations of which were laid by God himself? Abandon this hope, if you were ever light-minded enough to have it. You will drink the cup to the last drop. You will be seized like thieves; they will search for false testimonies against you, and in reply to what you say in your defense they will cry: blasphemy! And the judges will say: he deserves to die. When this happens, rejoice: this is the last sign—the sign that you have truly been sent by the Father.

— Lamennais

2

Just as the darkness of the night reveals the heavenly lights, so too it is only suffering that reveals the whole of life’s meaning.

— Thoreau

3

Spiritual growth is impossible without suffering, life cannot expand—which is why death is always accompanied by suffering. Suffering is a necessary and beneficent condition of life. That is why the people have a saying that God loves the one whom misfortune pays a visit.

4

A fever, a mutilation, a cruel disappointment, a loss of wealth, a loss of friends, seems at the moment unpaid loss, and unpayable. But the sure years reveal the deep remedial force that underlies all facts.

— Emerson

5

The meaning of the gospel is that the truth about human life is an open door, through which one transitions from a spontaneously-unconscious life to one that is rationally-conscious; suffering remains suffering, and death remains death, but in a rational consciousness they are accepted as the good—the good of a common, universal, divine, eternal, immortal life.

— Buka

6

How a human being receives his fate is undoubtedly more important than what his fate actually is.

— Humboldt

7

Small sufferings bring us out of ourselves whereas great sufferings return us to ourselves. A cracked bell makes a dull sound: break it in two and it will produce a clear sound again.

— Jean-Paul (Richter)

8

The power and grace of religion consists in the fact that it explains to a person the meaning of his existence and his ultimate purpose. After we had discarded all the foundations of morality that flow from religion (as we have all done in our age of science and intellectual freedom), there is no longer any means of learning why we have come to this world and what we should do in it.

The mystery of fate embraces us from every side with its powerful questions and, truly, one has to not think at all to not feel the painful, terrible pointlessness of life. Bodily suffering, moral evil, spiritual pain, the happiness of evil people, the destruction of what is righteous—one could bear all this if only one could understand the inner order of the world, if one could see in it the work of Providence. A believer is happy about his wounds, he patiently bears the injustice and violence of his enemies; sin, even crime, does not deprive him of hope. But for a human being in whom all belief has been extinguished, evil and suffering lose their meaning, and life appears only as a repulsive joke.

— Anatole France

A human being who leads a spiritual life cannot but see that suffering moves him closer to his desired goal of perfection, and for such a human being suffering loses all its bitterness and becomes a good.