Jesus offers us opportunities to help him

"In the crosses of life that come to us, Jesus offers us opportunities to help him redeem the world. Let us profit by his generosity."

-- Ven Solanus Casey, OFM Cap

We serve others best when we do most for their souls

"WHEN did Christ redeem the world? When He died on Good Friday. How did Christ redeem the world? By His Passion and Death on Calvary. Why do we make the Sign of the Cross? To remind ourselves we have been redeemed by the Cross.

Of course we know that Christ, the First Apostle, was sent by the Father to save mankind by every word and action He performed during His visible stay on earth. But it was especially by His sufferings that we were delivered from sin and mainly by His Cross that we were saved.

We need to recall these truths in our day, when activism is being honored far beyond what it deserves. Some people feel “useless” because they are no longer as “active” in the service of others as they formerly were or as they would like to be.

They may suffer in a variety of ways: with some draining disease or crippling disability; with a natural, but no less painful, weakening of their bodily powers as they advance in years; with the awful sense of being no longer needed after decades of active service in the priesthood, religious life, single state or in rearing a family. Or the Lord may touch them early and they are disabled or confined or gravely handicapped in the prime of life.

No matter. The number of such persons in our society is large, and larger than most people would ever suppose. What they need to be told is that they can actually do more for others now than they ever could before.

Why should this be so? Because we serve others best when we do most for their souls. And we do most for their souls when we obtain graces from God for their numerous spiritual needs. If this means prayer, and it does, there is no more effective prayer than one that is joined with sacrifice, which in practice means prayer that is animated by the cheerful acceptance of the Cross.

The apostolate of suffering is not some exotic enterprise for only mystics or what we sometimes call “victim souls.” It is open to everyone who has faith, and love, and zeal for souls. Faith assures us that suffering must be noble, seeing that God became man in order to suffer and thereby save the world. Love enables us to make of every pain a willing sacrifice, seeing that it costs us so much. And zeal for souls urges us to actually rejoice as we are privileged to suffer something for the myriad souls redeemed by the blood of Christ.

He did His part to reconcile this sinful world with the Father. But the mercy that He merited by His Cross will remain sterile unless sinners cooperate with the graces He won for mankind. We must unite our cross with the Savior’s to help sinners respond to God’s mercy.

With St. Paul we can say to others what he told the Christians of his day: “It makes me happy to suffer for you, as I am suffering now, and in my own body to do what I can to make up all that is still to be undergone by Christ for the sake of His Body, the Church.” (Colossians 1:24). Christ is still redeeming the world, with our cooperation."

-- The Apostolate of Suffering by Fr John A Hardon, SJ

The sorrow of Jesus goes far beyond the bounds of death

"A chalice is offered to Him which He cannot drink. He shudders so violently that the tears pour not only from His eyes but from the whole of His body, bringing with them drops of blood. He weeps with His whole being. He weeps as a man might bleed, and that blood and those tears are for Him the dew of His last night on earth.

Jesus has said, 'My soul is sorrowful even unto death.' But the words are inadequate; the sorrow of Jesus goes far beyond the bounds of death. Death reaches only the body, and there are limits to what the body can endure. There are sufferings which normally would break the human heart; but God can, if He wills, sustain the soul's frail consort so that the spirit may suffer the more. Death will now stay its hand at the threshold of agony, but for the soul there will be no limit. Chalice upon chalice will be offered Him, until the very Cross will come as a welcome relief. Who shall enter into these depths, and who shall describe how, after those tears of blood that redden the ground, a still more copious flood of tears bathes that soul divine, like a current that flows in the depths of the sea?

We can never comprehend this vision of Jesus, but we may infer it. In the foreground appears death with its retinue of pain and suffering. The Cross has suddenly reared itself before Him. Admittedly the Cross is familiar to His thought, and He has accepted it from the beginning. He speaks of the morrow as 'His hour,' saying, 'For this cause came I unto this hour.' But do we not all know the suddenly vivid horror that a prospect may assume after long habit has dulled its outlines? When pain is all-absorbing and the whole mind is concentrated upon its image, then the torture exceeds all bounds. So it is with the Son of Man.

'My heart is troubled within me: and the fear of death is fallen upon me. Fear and trembling are come upon me: and darkness hath covered me.' So far as words can convey, these expressions of the Psalmist give a faithful picture of the agony of Jesus. He is scourged by His thoughts and crucified by His knowledge of what is to come. His visions drag Him across the garden, up the slope to the house of Annas, to the lodge of Caiaphas, to the tower of Antonia, along the streets to death and to the tomb. He sees it all; and for a moment He is seized with an obsession that He cannot shake off. Flat on His face, arms extended, He tastes the extreme bitterness of desolation."

-- What Jesus saw from the Cross by A. G. Sertillanges, OP

** Painting by Ary Sheffer

Works of expiation bind one closer to Christ

"[W]hen someone desires to suffer, it is not merely a pious reminder of the suffering of the Lord. Voluntary expiatory suffering is what truly and really unites one to the Lord intimately. When it arises, it comes from an already existing relationship with Christ. For, by nature, a person flees from suffering. And the mania for suffering caused by a perverse lust for pain differs completely from the desire to suffer in expiation. Such lust is not a spiritual striving, but a sensory longing, no better than other sensory desires, in fact worse, because it is contrary to nature. Only someone whose spiritual eyes have been opened to the supernatural correlations of worldly events can desire suffering in expiation, and this is only possible for people in whom the spirit of Christ dwells, who as members are given life by the Head, receive his power, his meaning, and his direction. Conversely, works of expiation bind one closer to Christ, as every community that works together on one task becomes more and more closely knit and as the limbs of a body, working together organically, continually become more strongly one.

But because being one with Christ is our sanctity, and progressively becoming one with him our happiness on earth, the love of the cross in no way contradicts being a joyful child of God. Helping Christ carry his cross fills one with a strong and pure joy, and those who may and can do so, the builders of God's kingdom, are the most authentic children of God. And so those who have a predilection for the way of the cross by no means deny that Good Friday is past and that the work of salvation has been accomplished. Only those who are saved, only children of grace, can in fact be bearers of Christ's cross. Only in union with the divine Head does human suffering take on expiatory power. To suffer and to be happy although suffering, to have one's feet on the earth, to walk on the dirty and rough paths of this earth and yet to be enthroned with Christ at the Father's right hand, to laugh and cry with the children of this world and ceaselessly to sing the praises of God with the choirs of angels this is the life of the Christian until the morning of eternity breaks forth."

-- The Hidden Life by St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross

Take courage, offer Him your pains incessantly

"If we were well accustomed to the exercise of the presence of GOD, all bodily diseases would be much alleviated thereby. GOD often permits that we should suffer a little, to purify our souls, and oblige us to continue with Him.

Take courage, offer Him your pains incessantly, pray to Him for strength to endure them. Above all, get a habit of entertaining yourself often with GOD, and forget Him the least you can. Adore Him in your infirmities, offer yourself to Him from time to time; and, in the height of your sufferings, beseech Him humbly and affectionately (as a child his father) to make you conformable to His holy will. I shall endeavour to assist you with my poor prayers.

GOD has many ways of drawing us to Himself. He sometimes hides Himself from us: but faith alone, which will not fail us in time of need, ought to be our support, and the foundation of our confidence, which must be all in GOD.

I know not how GOD will dispose of me: I am always happy: all the world suffer; and I, who deserve the severest discipline, feel joys so continual, and so great, that I can scarce contain them.

I would willingly ask of GOD a part of your sufferings, but that I know my weakness, which is so great, that if He left me one moment to myself, I should be the most wretched man alive. And yet I know not how He can leave me alone, because faith gives me as strong a conviction as sense can do, that He never forsakes us, till we have first forsaken Him. Let us fear to leave Him. Let us be always with Him. Let us live and die in His presence. Do you pray for me, as I for you."

-- Twelfth letter by Br Lawrence of the Resurrection, ocd

From now on suffering is linked to love

"In the Old Testament, God often shows His compassion and His tenderness towards man who is suffering. But the coming of the Saviour on earth marks in a more poignant fashion the solidarity of God with suffering humanity. The Gospel shows us Jesus ceaselessly bringing Himself near to the miseries of His contemporaries. Suffering moves Him, touches Him, upsets Him, sometimes to tears. Disregarding custom, we see Him go before the lepers, the untouchables of the time, to put His hands in their wounds and cure them. The suffering of hearts inspires profound compassion in Him, as in the scene of the widow of Naim weeping over the death of her only son. He draws all of those in pain towards His Heart open to all suffering: Come to me, all you that labor, and are burdened, and I will refresh you(Matt. 11: 28).

But God wished to go further: by becoming man, He put Himself also among the number of the suffering. Jesus wished to be born in a wretched stable; He worked hard to gain His daily bread; He knew hunger, thirst, the weariness of long journeys on foot (cf. John 4: 6); for three years, He did not have a home, not even a rock on which to rest His head (cf. Matt. 8: 20); He suffered the misunderstanding of men, their mockeries; they treated Him as a man given over to wine and good food. The truth and the depth of His fear of suffering appears particularly in the prayer in Gethsemani: My God, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me! In the passion, physical and mental pain reach their paroxysm. Finally, Our Lord wished to join man in the mystery of death. All men who suffer can say in facing the Crucified: "He too has suffered."

But if Jesus passed through the abyss of suffering, it was to transfigure it and give it a completely new dimension: from now on suffering is linked to love. If it remains a great evil in itself, suffering has become the most solid foundation of the essential possession of man, that is to say, eternal salvation. It permits us to be tied to Jesus in the work of the Redemption. A consequence of sin, it becomes, by the power of God, the means of our moral recovery."

-- From the spiritual letter of November 21, 1996, by Dom Antoine Marie, osb. Reproduced with permission through the kindness of Fr Jacques Marie, osb.

** Dom Antoine is a benedictine priest at Saint Joseph de Clairval Abbey in Flavigny.

Trials are a gold mine to be exploited

"Oh! How it costs to give Jesus what He asks!... What joy that it costs... What an unspeakable joy to carry our Crosses feebly...

...far from complaining to Jesus about that Cross He is sending us, I cannot understand the infinite love that has drawn Him to treat us in this way... (...) What a joy to be humbled; it is the only thing that makes saints!... Can we doubt now the will of Jesus concerning our souls?... Life is only a dream, and soon we shall wake up, and what joy... the greater our sufferings are the more infinite will be our glory... Oh, let us not lose the trial that Jesus is sending us, it is a gold mine to be exploited. Are we going to miss the chance?... The grain of sand wants to get to work, without joy, without courage, without strength, and it is all these titles which will facilitate the enterprise for it; it wants to work through love.

The Martyrdom is beginning. Let us enter the arena together..."

-- Letters of St Thérèse of Lisieux

Suffering makes known to God the soul's need for Him

"Suffering is good: guard it as a precious thing. Far better than any words of ours can do, it makes known to God the soul's need for Him. What causes our suffering is the disproportion we see between what we are and what He is. A soul would be petty, indeed, if it did not suffer from that knowledge. But this suffering diminishes that disproportion, and comes from the very effort we are making to reach Him. With the effort, however, is given grace: He giveth grace to the humble. There you have true humility, and it is the reason for all the graces we have received (and they are much greater than we realize). Humility acknowledges these graces: it would not be true humility if it did not. What hast though that thou hast not received? St Paul does not overlook the hast, and we must never forget it either. But he reminds us that all that we have received is the gift of God - we have received it. And what we have received is the pledge of what we shall receive. We must never mind facing our misery, but we should always bring it to God's mercy, which is ever inclined towards it in order to raise it up."

-- They Speak by Silences by A Carthusian

Your sufferings have saved many souls on the field of battle

"More than ever, I understand that the smallest events of our life are conducted by God; He is the One who makes us desire and who grants our desires..."


"Let us work together for the salvation of souls; we have only the one day of this life to save them and thus to give the Lord proofs of our love. The tomorrow of this day will be eternity, and then Jesus will restore to you a hundredfold the very sweet and very legitimate joys that you sacrificed for Him. He knows the extent of your sacrifice, He knows the suffering of those dear to you increases your own, but He also suffered this martyrdom. To save our souls He left His Mother, He saw the Immaculate Virgin standing at the foot of the Cross, her heart transpierced by a sword of sorrow. "

"With all my heart I thank God for having left you on the field of battle in order that you may win numerous victories for Him; already your sufferings have saved many souls. Saint John of the Cross has said: 'The smallest movement of pure love is more useful to the Church than all other works put together.' If it is so, how profitable for the Church must be your pains and trials since it is for the love of Jesus alone that you suffer them with joy."


From the letters of St Thérèse of Lisieux

Let us overflow with respect and love for one another

[Speaking of war]

"Moreover, in the hearts of those whom it unites, camaraderie arouses and nourishes two very strong feelings: a sense of empathy, accompanied by an instinct of devotion.

Without realizing it comrades who suffer from the same burden empathize with one another. Precisely because empathy is a form of charity, it generates spontaneous reflexes of devotion - sometimes even heroic devotion - that lead comrades to rescue one another. Moreover, since war is the harshest collective ordeal, it gives rise to the most ardent and enduring camaraderie. Comrades love one another strongly because they suffer intensely. Absorbed in distress, differences apparent in civilian life disappear. There remain only human beings, equally hurt in their innermost sensitivities and equally exposed to the same serious threats, as together they strive for the same goal. Their union grows deeper in this communion with the same ordeal.

We are now living through such months of ordeal! Therefore, let us overflow with this strong spirit of true camaraderie, which teaches us to respect one another, to love one another, and to help one another for the rest of our lives."

-- Fr Jaques of Jesus, ocd

Cited in Père Jacques: Resplendent in Victory by Francis Murphy, SJ

Forbid suffering entrance to your soul

"We must not be slaves either of time or health; we cannot dispose of either as we will! If we thought of acting only when all the conditions were favourable, we would pass our lives doing nothing; or at least we would get out of life very little of what it can give us.

Go ahead! That is a phrase I like so much. Even if everything is far from perfect, we must learn to say it. And things will go ahead, since joy does not come from without or from circumstances. Its principal source is withing us.

That is why faith is such a sure source of happiness, even now. The faithful who keep themselves in a state of grace, or who see that they return to it without delay whenever necessary, possess in their souls God who is infinite Goodness. And it is his presence that keeps them in peace. Troubles and disturbing events will always cause suffering; it is a law of life, and we cannot alter it.

We shall never banish suffering in our life, but we can forbid it entrance to our soul, or at any rate to the higher part of the soul. We are there, as it were, on a mountain, and we regard our troubles as the dweller upon the mountain contemplates the storm sweeping over the plain.

But we do not reach that height all at once; we have to arrive at it by stages. The thousand and one petty annoyances that each day brings are our training. We must calmly watch them come and go. To want to avoid them all is impossible; to allow them to upset us is a weakness. There will always be some cloud on the horizon of our lives. But do not let any of these things stop you, or even affect you. In short: Go ahead!"

-- Where Silence is Praise by A Carthusian

Treasure each suffering

"There is a fathomless mystery in Jesus' cry of abandonment, in which he gathers every cry of humanity. This is a cry of labor for the 'new creation,' of our new birth as sons and daughters of God.

Yet, this labor is not accomplished without us. Jesus' extreme love impels us to live every suffering - as much as we are given - like him and in him.

And we can do it.

We can if, in each personal suffering and in those of others, we recognize a shadow of his infinite suffering, an aspect, an expression of his. Then, each time this suffering shows itself, we do not distance ourselves from it, but accept it fully as if we were accepting him. Forgetting ourselves, we cast our whole being into what God asks of us in the present moment, in the neighbor he places before us, motivated only by love. Then, very often we will see our sufferings vanish as if by some magic, and only love remains in the soul.

To treasure each suffering as one of the countless faces of Jesus crucified, and to unite our suffering to his, means to enter into his own dynamic of suffering-love. It means to participate in his light, his strength, his peace; it means to rediscover within us a new and abundant presence of God."

--Testimony of Hope by Francis Xavier Cardinal Nguyễn Văn Thuận

Dispose yourself to receive the crown of victory

"Think of [Christ's] suffering and that of the saints, and cease complaining. You have not yet resisted to the shedding of blood. What you suffer is very little compared with the great things they suffered who were so strongly tempted, so severely troubled, so tried and tormented in many ways. Well may you remember, therefore, the very painful woes of others, that you may bear your own little ones the more easily. And if they do not seem so small to you, examine if perhaps your impatience is not the cause of their apparent greatness; and whether they are great or small, try to bear them all patiently. The better you dispose yourself to suffer, the more wisely you act and the greater is the reward promised you. Thus you will suffer more easily if your mind and habits are diligently trained to it.

Do not say: 'I cannot bear this from such a man, nor should I suffer things of this kind, for he has done me a great wrong. He has accused me of many things of which I never thought. However, from someone else I will gladly suffer as much as I think I should.'

Such a thought is foolish, for it does not consider the virtue of patience or the One Who will reward it, but rather weighs the person and the offense committed. The man who will suffer only as much as seems good to him, who will accept suffering only from those from whom he is pleased to accept it, is not truly patient. For the truly patient man does not consider from whom the suffering comes, whether from a superior, an equal, or an inferior, whether from a good and holy person or from a perverse and unworthy one; but no matter how great an adversity befalls him, no matter how often it comes or from whom it comes, he accepts it gratefully from the hand of God, and counts it a great gain. For with God nothing that is suffered for His sake, no matter how small, can pass without reward. Be prepared for the fight, then, if you wish to gain the victory. Without struggle you cannot obtain the crown of patience, and if you refuse to suffer you are refusing the crown. But if you desire to be crowned, fight bravely and bear up patiently. Without labor there is no rest, and without fighting, no victory."

-- Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis

Facing Life

"Endure! In the first place through good sense and sound philosophy. What is the use of rebelling? In any event, we must accept what comes. Events dominate us; we are not the masters of them. To recriminate, to sigh, and to protest are ineffective actions. 

Endure! Through a supernatural spirit, because our crosses unite us to our Lord's Cross. God sends or permits to identify ourselves with His Son, Moreover, even humanly speaking, suffering well accepted makes us mature; it demands rare virtues. As long as a man has had nothing but happiness, he does not know of what he is capable, just as we do not really know what the sound of the bell is as long as the clapper has not struck it. But let sorrow come upon a man, then he can divine what he is capable of doing. When the soul is fortified by divine motives, it can reach that summit which humanity can reach in the way of moral uplift. For the sons of men as for the Son of Man, the highest royalty comes from the crown of thorns. 

Endure! Through charity for all your brethren. While it permits us "to complete that which is wanting in the passion of Jesus Christ," suffering gives us a most efficacious role int he redemption. To act safely; but to suffer, how much more! The great instrument of salvation is the acceptance of the cross on which one is to be nailed. If we had more often present in our mind the sufferings of all our brethren scattered throughout the world, how much more cheerful would we be in accepting the many myseries which assail us!" -- Some Rare Virtues by Raoul Plus, SJ