Pain

“We’re frightened and weak people, living in uncertainty and fear. And if you ask, no one will say: “I want to feel pain!” No one wants to experience pain. It’s normal, logical, but at the same time, spiritually immature. And if someone wants to spiritually change in his life, he must be realistic, as were the Fathers of the Church. They were realists, not soaring in the clouds. We have to understand that we’re asking the wrong question. We ask: “Do I want to feel pain or not?” It’s not about whether I want it or not, whether I like it or not, but that I’m going to experience pain. There is no life without pain. A life without pain is a life that’s dangerous for society. The body experiences pain and thereby informs you that something’s wrong. Your soul experiences pain and tells you: “Stop! You’ve crossed the line, you’ve crossed the limit of what you can endure.” (Fr. Charalampos Papadopoulos)

“In today’s gospel reading [Luke 8:41-56], Jairus and his wife were put to the ultimate test when the Lord said of their daughter, “Do not fear; only believe, and she shall be well…[and] “Do not weep; for she is not dead but sleeping.”… Something similar occurred with the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years…As different as Jairus and this woman are, they have in common that they were surely tempted to fall into despair. They saw no way out of the tragic circumstances they faced. To their credit, they did not look for scapegoats to blame for their grave problems; neither did they do anything self-destructive. Instead, they offered the deepest pains of their lives to Christ for healing beyond what they could possibly understand or reasonably expect. Unlike the pointless babbling we fall into on social media and in other settings, they did not try to distract themselves from reality by inflaming their passions with idle words that only make things worse.” (Fr. Philip LeMasters)

“We live in a culture that abhors suffering. Suffering is seen as failure and worse. The remedy of suffering is the great mantra of modernity, even as it uses it to mask its covert drive for wealth (“all they want is your money”). The mystery of our salvation is not the story of suffering’s elimination. What happened on the Cross was not the end of suffering – it was the revelation of suffering in its true purpose and meaning. We have the promise: “…God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4). This, however, is not a promise fulfilled in our lifetime. It stands at the end of all things. The Cross is more than a means to that end. There is within it an eternal revelation of the End as well.” (Father Stephen Freeman)

“…we look at Christian mystics throughout church history, as well as many heroes of faith in the Bible, we find that spiritual growth follows this same cross-shaped pattern, including times of intense vulnerability, loneliness, and even apparent abandonment by God. These men and women of faith show us that the spiritual life is as much about seeking as beholding; as much about doubt and confusion as certainty and assurance; as much about the painful longing for God in the midst of exile, darkness, and pain as it is about the reassuring presence of His light.” (Robin Phillips)

“The point of our struggle is not to gain some sort of spiritual grit or prove our endurance. We are not asked to become grim warriors in the face of pain; we are asked to be children who will not rest until they know themselves cradled in the arms of the Father who begot them for joy.” (Sarah Clarkson)

“Oftentimes, our most painful experiences come from times when we sought to love and be loved. Nearly always, the most difficult people were not always difficult. In any given instance, we can examine a life and follow the timeline of their life and trace it back to a time when they were not as they are now. When their trajectory became tragically altered, their new priority became one of distance, protection, and a self-centered preoccupation to look out for themselves. We can call it for what we see it on the surface; pride, narcissism, and ego. However, in the end, all those traits are aimed at self-preservation and protection. Sometime and somewhere a great hurt or violation occurred in their life, often in a relationship of trust, which crippled their ability to love and to receive love normally. Perhaps, if we became more mindful of this, forgiveness might just be a little bit easier.” (Fr. Joshua Makoul)

“One of the worst aspects of suffering is the isolation in which it sets us. To be in pain is, in a way, to be cut off from the presence and safety of love. Our loss and our grief, our history of abuse, our sense of abandonment, our secret disorders of body and mind: these separate us from those around us and from our belief in God’s fellowship with us.” (Sarah Clarkson)

“Patience and endurance during troubles and suffering, perseverance during our most painful times in life, can actually be a time of growth in our faith and a peace that defies worldly understanding if we pray daily and persist in pursuing God. We also, and this is extremely important, must let go of any ego, pride, and shame, and let us others love us in our weakness to be able to have this type of endurance and patience. We cannot go it alone. The love of others can be a great source of strength to us because God designed us to be in Communion with Him through the love of others. Unfortunately, we often tend to want to isolate ourselves during trials and cloak ourselves in a veneer of “okayness” when we are suffering and need help.” (Sacramental Living Ministries)

“As we seek resolution to painful experiences in our lives, we may eventually learn that sometimes insight and self-discovery are not enough. We may have done all the cognitive work we can, grieved fully, and even journaled extensively, yet still find ourselves struggling. We are learning more about how painful or traumatic experiences affect the brain. Knowing just how the brain is affected, helps us discover the activities we need to truly heal. To heal means to gain closure, peace, a profound sense of the past being in the past, and forgiveness. We now know that the entire limbic system part of the brain is affected by painful experiences. To heal all those parts that were affected by the negative experience, we will need to open up all those same parts to new experiences that are healing. We will need to find the deep experiences that can access and heal the same parts of the brain affected by traumatic or painful experience. Oftentimes, these deep experiences already exist in our life, but are often overlooked or taken for granted.” (Fr. Joshua Makoul)

“We know that, if someone shows us understanding, while it’s welcome, it’s not enough. We need somebody who’ll bear the weight of the pain and give us the strength to carry on. The experience of those who believe in Christ and call upon him confirms that their cry didn’t disappear into the void. The more those who humbled themselves, after their difficulty, and requested the help of the only one able to provide a way out when we’re tempted (1 Cor. 10:13), the more Christ came and transformed the pain into convalescence, the darkness into light. With this experience, we know that not everything’s black, that life isn’t just pain, with no means of escape.” (Pemptousia Partnership)

“God never allows pain without a purpose in the lives of His children. He never allows Satan, nor circumstances, nor any ill-intending person to afflict us unless He uses that affliction for our good. God never wastes pain…Regardless of the source of our pain, we must accept that God knows, God loves and God is at work” (Jerry Bridges, Charles Stanley)

“God uses the desert of the soul—our suffering and difficulties, our pain, our dark nights (call them what you will)—to form us, to make us beautiful souls. He redeems what we might deem our living hells, if we allow Him.” (Marlena Graves)

“I am certain that I never did grow in grace one-half so much anywhere as I have upon the bed of pain.” (Charles Spurgeon)

“In Jesus Christ, God experienced the greatest depths of pain. Therefore, though Christianity does not provide the reason for each experience of pain, it provides deep resources for actually facing suffering with hope and courage rather than bitterness and despair.” (Pastor Timothy Keller)

“When we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand.” (Henri Nouwen)

“All the pain in the world comes from sin and selfishness. And if we do not tackle sin and selfishness, we just tackle symptoms. We can pass the best laws in the world, we can attack all the structures we like, but if we have not changed the hearts of people, what we have done is like taking a lunatic and tying him up.” (Anthony De Mello)

“It would certainly be most dangerous to assume that any given pain was penal. I believe that all pain is contrary to God’s will, absolutely but not relatively. When I am taking a thorn out of my own finger (or a child’s finger) the pain is “absolutely” contrary to my will; i.e. if I could have chosen a situation without pain I would have done so. But I do will what caused the pain, relatively to the given situation; i.e. granted the thorn I prefer the pain to leaving the thorn where it is.” (C. S. Lewis)

“There are two types of pain in this world: pain that hurts you, and pain that changes you…God does not want us to simply forget the pain of the past. He wants us to be fruitful in the land of our suffering! Use it for good. Minister to others. Plant seeds of hope." (Epic Women, Sharon Jaynes)

“Our suffering can make us much more sensitive to the servants of God [others]. People who have known pain are able to reach out with compassion to others who hurt. If you have suffered ask God how your experience can be used to help others.” (Life Application Study Bible, Hebrews 2:10)

“The moments in our lives of deep pain offer us unique opportunities to hear vital truths.” (Father Barnabas Powell)

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