Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II on Suffering.


A snippet or two from the Homiletic & Pastoral Review.

April 2010. Page 15.

Article by Arland K. Nichols. He's from Katy, Texas and the Pope John XXIII High School there.

"Consider the beautiful words of Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II.

"In Spe Salvi Pope Benedict writes: The true measure of humanity is essentially determined in relationship to suffering and to the sufferer. This holds true both for the individual and for society. A society unable to accept its suffering members and incapable of helping to share their suffering and to bear it inwardly through compassion is a cruel and inhuman society...To suffer with the other and for others ... these are fundamental elements of humanity, and to abandon them would destroy man himself..."

"In Salvifici Doloris John Paul II writes, suffering is present in the world in order to release love, in order to give birth to works of love towards neighbor, in order to transform the whole of human civilization into a civilization of love..."