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| (Image source: EWTN) |
The greatest
tragedy in the world, Cardinal Cushing once said, was not pain, but wasting
pain. We all suffer, everyone of us, the
youngest to oldest. We suffer
loneliness, cancer, the loss of a wife, a husband, a child; we suffer
misunderstandings, family conflicts, ruptured friendships, cosmetic
disfigurement, mental, emotional, physical incapacities. We suffer a sense of utter powerlessness, an
empty feeling of futility. The world is
awash in pain. How tragic if that pain
is wasted; that pain can be united with the suffering of Christ on the cross to
achieve enormous good.
The Cardinal
knew that Christ did not make possible the salvation of the world through his
teaching, his preaching, his miracles, but by his suffering and death on the
cross. When He appeared to be utterly
powerless, He was radiating the greatest power unleashed in the world. When He was crying out, “My God, my God, why
hast Thou forsaken Me?” He was filling
billions of hearts yet to come with comfort, with peace. I unite a headache, a backache, a heartache
with Christ on the cross, and wondrous graces flow into the heart of a widow
who has lost her only son in Nigeria,
a lonely teenager contemplating suicide in San Francisco,
a woman ravaged with cancer in New
York. My pain,
trifling or overwhelming, has not gone wasted.
(John Cardinal O'Connor,
Servant of God)
[There are 1199 other inspiring and challenging quotations to ponder in Forgotten Truths to Set Faith Afire! - Words to Challenge, Inspire and Instruct]