We can try to limit suffering, to fight against
it, but we cannot eliminate it. It is
when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might
involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing
truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which
there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and
abandonment is all the greater. It is not by sidestepping or fleeing from
suffering that we are healed, but rather by our capacity for accepting it,
maturing through it, and finding meaning through union with Christ, who suffered
with infinite love.
Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI