By suffering we are able to give something to God. The gift of pain, of suffering is a big thing and cannot be accomplished in Paradise.
The life of a Christian is nothing but a perpetual struggle against self; there is no flowering of the soul to the beauty of its perfection except at the price of pain.
Be comforted with this divine thought that your spiritual and physical pains are the test of the Divine Will.
The pain caused by this wound which He inflicts on me and the sweetness which accompanies it are so intense that I cannot even begin to describe it. However. . . this pain and this sweetness are completely spiritual, although it is also true that they are shared by the body to a high degree.
