A Few on Suffering

“All suffering is unique—and all suffering is common. I have to be reminded of the latter truth when I am suffering myself—and of the former when I see others suffering.”

†

“To welcome suffering is not to take pleasure in it. It is not love of suffering for its own sake. It is consent to one’s humiliation by it. It is the opening of one’s self to the blessings of what is inevitable, like earth which allows the water of heaven to soak right through it.

There is an art in suffering—but it must not be confused either with the art of cultivating suffering or with the art of avoiding it.”

†

“There is one way only of being happy: not to be ignorant of suffering, and not to run away from it; but to accept the transfiguration it brings. Tristitia vestra vertetur in gaudium.¹”

¹ “But your distress shall be turned to joy”, John xvi, 20 (Knox).

†

“Suffering is never confined within the moment. It is never simply undergone. Like everything else in the life of one’s conscious self it is not only always felt, but actually discerned; that is to say, positively built up. It is always memory and anticipation. That is verifiable even in the humblest suffering of the body.

Instantaneous pain, which is that which animals undergo, is so different from human pain, that no doubt it does not deserve this same name of suffering. Animals do not really suffer, because they do not make themselves suffer. They do not add the twofold reaction of memory and anticipation to the shock they undergo. Here, as everywhere else, the greatness of man brings about his wretchedness.”

~Henri de Lubac