Suffering

Grace: To suffer with dignity in silence
Scriptures: Is 53:11-12; James 1:2-5; John 12:23-26

"At the end of Lent, I was thinking about how important it is to know how to live the painful moments, the suffering, being cast aside, loneliness, moments of failure, disappointment, and unfaithfulness...Sometimes the Lord wants us to participate in human suffering. We must mature in this capacity to suffer and at the same time offer it to Jesus. To do this, it is necessary to speak to Him, to cry out to God about our suffiering, kneeling with our eyes fixed on the crucifix. We must form this way of thinking so that, in the moment of the Cross, we do not walk around complaining, trying to excape it, and wasting this precious moment in which Jesus is sharing the Cross with us and giving us a small part of His pain. Pain is a part of human life. Do not avoid it, minimize its significance, or talk about it in such a trivial way!"

"...Jesus invites us to look at him , to ask Him for faith and love, so that our heart will not lose hope, and after the darkness of Good Friday, we will know how to capture in our own lives the radiant light of Easter morning! The risen Jesus is our true hope, because in Him pain and death are defeated often!"

--Mother Elvira Petozzi, quoted in Magnifcat, March 2011, p. 321.