“Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.”

“God never sends suffering. Never. It is never "God's will" that we should suffer. God would like us not to suffer. But since the world brings suffering, and since God refuses to use His almighty power and treat us as foolish children, He aligns Himself with us, goes into Auschwitz with us, is devastated by 9/11 with us, and draws us with Him through it all into fulfillment. This is a high price to pay for our human freedom, but it is worth it. To be mere automatons for whom God arranges the world to cause us no suffering would mean we never have a self. We could not make choices.”

“If Christ is God, He cannot sin, and if suffering was a sin in and by itself, He could not have suffered and died for us. However, since He took the most horrific death to redeem us, He showed us in fact that suffering and pain have great power.”

“He gave our pain and struggles a holy significance, a redemptive power, which makes it a privilege for us to suffer with Christ.”

“Ah! What pleasure it must be to a woman to suffer for the one she loves!”

“Ah, grief makes us precise!”