SUFFERING

This is consequently what must be our strength when faced with the question of evil: not a philosophical response, but the confidence of a child in God, in His Love and in His Wisdom. The certitude that Now we know that God works in every way for the good of those who love Him and are called in accordance with His plan (Romans 8:28) and the sufferings of the present time simply don’t compare with the glory to come that will be revealed to us (Romans 8:18). Searching For & Maintaining Peace by Rev. Jacques Philippe

In the domain of our personal lives, as in that of the history of the world, we must be convinced, if we want to go to the limits of our Christian faith, that God is sufficiently good and powerful to use whatever evil there may be, as well as any suffering however absurd and unnecessary it may appear to be, in our favor. Searching For & Maintaining Peace by Rev. Jacques Philippe

He never leaves us deprived of what is essential: His presence, His peace and all that is necessary for the complete fulfillment of our lives, according to His plans for us. If He permits suffering, then it is our strength to believe, as Thérèse of Lisieux says, that “God does not permit unnecessary suffering.” Searching For & Maintaining Peace by Rev. Jacques Philippe

Let us therefore learn to abandon ourselves, to have total confidence in God, in the big things as in the small, with the simplicity of little children. And God will manifest His tenderness, His providence and His fidelity in a manner sometimes overwhelming. If God treats us at certain moments with an apparently great harshness, He also has an unexpected delicateness, of which only a love as tender and pure as His is capable. At the end of his life, Saint John of the Cross, en route to the convent where he would end his days — sick, exhausted, unable to continue — longed for some asparagus, like the asparagus he had eaten in his childhood. Near a rock where he sat to catch his breath, there was a bunch of asparagus, miraculously deposited. Searching For & Maintaining Peace by Rev. Jacques Philippe

In abandoning myself to God, I experience in a concrete fashion that “it really works,” that God makes all things work together for my good, even evil, even suffering, even my own sins. How many occasions that I dreaded, when they arrived, in the final analysis proved to be supportable, and finally beneficial, after the first impact of pain. That which I believed to be working against me revealed itself to be to my benefit. Thus, I tell myself: that which God does for me in His infinite Mercy, He must do for others also; in a mysterious and hidden manner, He must do it for the entire world. Searching For & Maintaining Peace by Rev. Jacques Philippe

So much of life includes being hurt by good things that have been misused. The good is the easiest to abuse. We are hurt by good things done wrongly. … Evil is the abuse of the good. The Gift of Thorns: Jesus, the Flesh, and the War for Our Wants by A.J. Swoboda