Spiritual suffering

“ Yet another illustration, showing the directly spiritual influence of suffering—those countless cases of bed-ridden invalids, often in intense pain, who develop an intense, fervent, yet restful piety, seldom attained even by the most devout in active life. ”

“ We cannot, if we would, escape the notice of soul-suffering in this world. We have to recognize the presence of spiritual as well as bodily disease among our fellow-creatures. By sense, and thought, and reason, and observation, and experience, by each and all, we have had forced upon our attention those internal disarrangements, those mental fractures, and those spiritual lacerations, which are wasting away the better portion of man's being, and of which, indeed, physical ailments and bodily pain are but the outward signs and symbols. ”

“ THE third kind of suffering and pain that the soul endures in this state results from the fact that two other extremes meet here in one, namely, the Divine and the human. The Divine is this purgative contemplation, and the human is the subject—that is, the soul. The Divine assails the soul in order to renew it and thus to make it Divine; and, stripping it of the habitual affections and attachments of the old man, to which it is very closely united, knit together and conformed, destroys and consumes its spiritual substance, and absorbs it in deep and profound darkness. ”

“ The designed end of temporal afflictions is to cause men to consider their spiritual wants, and to seek the good of their higher natures.
Often suffering not only fails to purify the soul from sin, but aggravates and intensifies its selfish and malignant passions. ”

“ But God sends us suffering also because "He longs to give us a magnificent reward." What is this reward? "He knows that suffering is the only means of preparing us to know Him as He knows Himself, and to become ourselves divine." ”

“ Therese I begin to understand more and more the source of your surprising strength in pain, and suffering, for what can be impossible to one who leans on God Almighty's power, living in the loving consciousness of His abiding presence in the soul? ”

“ Yet it should be remembered, that, in many signal and well-attested instances the fervor of the religious affections has almost or entirely obliterated the consciousness of physical suffering, and has proved its power to vanquish every inferior emotion, and to fill the heart with heaven, even amid the utmost intensities of pain. ”

“ And hereby I was brought into, and kept under continual bondage through fear of death.
3. I was now cast into the most grievous disquietude, having sorrow in my heart daily. I was in a dreadful strait betwixt two, on the one hand, my fears gave an edge to my convictions of sin. This made me attend more to the word of God; the more I attended to it, they increased the more; and I saw there was no way to be freed from them, but by being thoroughly religious. On the other hand if I should engage in religion in earnest, I saw the hazard of suffering, perhaps dying for it. ”

“ The God of nature appears silent, unalterable, unsympathetic, pursuing general good without a throb of pity for individual suffering; and that suffering is so unspeakable, so terrible! Close shadowing every bridal, every cradle, is this awful possibility of death that may come at any moment, unannounced and inevitable. ”

“ Behold, I God, have suffered these things for all that they might not suffer if they would repent, but if they would not repent they must suffer even as I, which suffering caused myself, even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain and to bleed at every pore, and to suffer both body and spirit. ”

“ Indeed, with the appearance of the religious standards and certitudes, that crushing universal feeling of melancholy and of positive disgust breaks up, and yields to contrasted joys and sorrows, and to a buoyant energy in the very midst and through the very means of suffering and of sacrifice. ”

“ What gnawing grief, what hidden sorrows have you not been called upon to endure, from the death of your mother to the birth of your child! Who would ever believe such ills could reach one so envied, so admired, and so calculated to enjoy and impart happiness to others?"
"Oh, my lord, there are some sorrows so deep, so unapproachable, that for worlds we would not even have them suspected; and the severest increase of suffering would arise from the very doubt of our being the enviable creatures we are believed to be." ”

“ Suffering is birth, suffering is old age, suffering is sickness, suffering is death. O thirst to be led from birth to birth! Thirst for power, thirst for pleasure, thirst for being, thirsts that are the source of all suffering! O evil thirsts, the saint knows you not, the saint who extinguishes his desires, the saint who knows the noble eight-fold path. ”

“ Our Lord [103] chose for Himself and for His Mother a life of suffering, to make us understand and to show us how suffering may aid us—yes, the very same suffering which hardens the sinner. What is the secret, then, of suffering? That by means of it, and because of it, we may make Acts of Love and Contrition and Submission to God's Will. Suffering is too powerful an instrument to leave our human nature untouched by it ”

“ Do you wish to see the Prophets and servants of God imprisoned, bound in chains, and sacrificed in blood? When you are brought face to face with suffering, you see nothing in it that is desirable, then why cultivate a morbid desire for suffering? ”

“ So may it be with the sufferings which saints are called to endure—not self-inflicted pangs, but trials appointed by God. Numerous passages in Holy Writ lead us to such a conclusion: "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory."
Yes; there is a mystery in suffering which we do not fully understand, nor perhaps ever will, until suffering is exchanged for bliss everlasting. Preeminence in pain appears to be connected with preeminence in glory. What was the answer of our Lord to those who asked for the highest places in Heaven? ”

“ No circle in any hell would have contained more concentrated suffering than was crowded into his every conscious moment—horrible, brute, physical suffering, tearing at every nerve, suffering that degraded him, that left him no humanity. ”

“ The suffering is when he leaves the soul (as it were alone) in pain or in affliction, to struggle with the powers of darkness, which at such a time eagerly beset it. This I have sometimes known, and this is suffering indeed.—I have the same confidence in God for my dear Mr. ”

“ Possibility of the Spirit Suffering: It is just as real, this suffering of the spirit for the violation of the moral law, as the suffering of physical pain that comes from the violation of some physical law. The mind no less than the body may be hurt, wounded as deeply as the body, and carry its scars as the evidence of its wounds as long. Mental suffering is as real and poignant as physical pain ”

“ The truth, however, as shown in a previous chapter, is that suffering has no proportion to the guilt of sin, but is related in the scheme of Divine providence to life in this world, its movement, discipline, and perfecting in the individual and the race. Afflictions, pains, and griefs are appointed to the best as well as the worst, because all need to be tried and urged on from [Pg 122] imperfect faith and spirituality to vigour, constancy, and courage of soul. ”

“ Oh! suffering world, Oh! known and unknown of my common flesh, Caught in this common net of death and woe, And life which binds to both! I see, I feel The vastness of the agony of earth, The vainness of its joys, the mockery Of all its best, the anguish of its worst; Since pleasures end in pain, and youth in age, And love in loss, and life in hateful death, And death in unknown lives, which will but yoke Men to their wheel again to whirl the round Of false delights and woes that are not false. ”

“ But we can bear each day and night of pain, only by taking each by itself. We can break each rod, but not the bundle.” And the sufferer, in real great suffering, is well described as turning to the wall in blank despair, when he looks too far on. ”

“ All the delight, as well as the pomp of this world, will end. All is over then. Nothing remains but two eternities, the one of glory and the other of punishment; one of bliss, the other of misery; one of joy, and the other of suffering; the just in heaven, the sinners in hell. [Examine how you stand , and especially with regard to your besetting sin.] Poor, then, will be that man who has loved the world, and who, for the miserable joys of this world, has lost everything — everything, soul, body, heaven, and God. [Awaken your contrition, and make a firm resolution.] ”

“ But if there be any who have tost, for one night, on a bed of suffering; any who have experienced, for one hour, the racking torture of intolerable pain; let them ask themselves how they would endure, in the immensity of endless time, “the worm which dieth not, and the fire which is not quenched.” ”

“ Surrounded as he is by the sick and the maimed, perhaps one of the first subjects on which he is led to ponder is the mystery of Pain. What does it all mean that a God otherwise beneficent should impose on the creatures he has brought into the world illness and suffering? ”

“ This is a painful disturbance, involving many misgivings, imaginings, and strivings which the soul has within itself, wherein, with the apprehension and realization of the miseries in which it sees itself, it fancies that it is lost and that its blessings have gone for ever. Wherefore the spirit experiences pain and sighing so deep that they cause it vehement spiritual groans and cries, to which at times it gives vocal expression; when it has the necessary strength and power it dissolves into tears, although this relief comes but seldom. ”

“ The infirmities and imperfections of that nature in others, as often as in ourselves, occasion human misery, which our God, in his infinite love, permits, to try our spirit's strength and faith, and so prepare us for that higher state of being, in which the spirit will move and act, when the earthly shell is shivered, and earthly infirmities are for ever stilled. In the time of suffering we cannot think thus ”

“ When you find yourself suddenly precipitated into an abyss of moral suffering, after the terrible shock which stuns, which bruises even the most delicate fibres of your heart, that which is, above all, most frightful, is this sudden night, black and profound, of the soul, which does not permit one to see even the thousand wounds by which it is torn. ”

“ Hence the suffering takes deeper root in the feelings; the suffering makes itself an object of imitation;—not so the redemption. If God himself suffered for my sake, how can I be joyful, how can I allow myself any gladness, at least on this corrupt earth, which was the theatre of his suffering? ”

“ What is the annihilation of suffering? 9
"Birth is suffering; old age is suffering; disease is suffering; death is suffering; sorrow and misery are suffering; affliction and despair are suffering; to be united with loathsome things is suffering; the loss of that which we love and the failure in attaining that which is longed for are suffering; all these things, O brethren, are suffering. 10
"And what, O brethren, is the origin of suffering? 11
"It is lust, passion, and the thirst for existence that yearns for pleasure everywhere, leading to a continual rebirth! ”

“ But when the heart has been deeply and powerfully struck by some cruel blow of destiny, the intensity of suffering exceeds the bounds of sensibility and emotion.
Those who work hard seldom yield themselves entirely up to real or fancied sorrow. When grief sits down, folds its hands, and mournfully feeds upon its own tears, weaving the dim shadows that a little exertion might sweep away into oblivion, the strong spirit is shorn of its might, and sorrow becomes our master. ”

“ That is, I suppose, one answer to the mystery of suffering so sure to come to all men in some way or other, and it is one that counsels us to seek the only real consolation for suffering,—that which is to be found in the religious feeling that somehow or other, somewhere, there is some one who knows and understands, and suffering has its meaning. ”

“ If the little book which emphasizes the pain and suffering of life has come to be looked upon as one of the greatest books of the world, by the very fact of its {276} profound treatment of this subject in lofty poetry, then it is easy to understand the place that pain bears in life. It is at the very heart of it. Nothing so reveals its meaning and makes it so bearable as religion. ”

“ But seeing a piece of suffering is carved to every one of us, less or more, as infinite Wisdom hath thought good, our part is to harden and habituate our soft and thin-skinned nature to endure fire and water, devils, lions, men, losses, wo hearts, as those that are looked upon by God, angels, men, and devils. ”

“ The mind or spirit may be made heavy by physical pain, as the body may be brought under the dominion of disease by mental suffering. It is only when a more powerful influence comes into operation that pain of body is prevented from exercising a depressing influence upon the spirit. ”

“ During severe suffering in body or soul, it may become a comforter, and in the moment of passing through the valley of the shadow of death, it is apt to soothe the anguish, by visions of heavenly bliss, but to an evil conscience it may also appear as an avenger, by prefiguring impending judgment and condemnation. ”

“ For what makes more impression on the heart than suffering? especially the suffering of one who considered in himself is free from suffering, exalted above it;—the suffering of the innocent, endured purely for the good of others, the suffering of love,—self-sacrifice? ”

“ Long days of suffering followed as the tortured nerves recorded their far-spread effects in the waste of the body and that failure of emotional control which even the most courageous feel when long under the tyranny of continuous pain. ”