Love and Suffering

Love and Suffering

"Even suffering is part of the truth of our life. Thus, trying to shield the youngest from every difficulty and experience of suffering, we risk creating, despite our good intentions, fragile persons of little generosity.
The capacity to love, in fact, corresponds to the capacity to suffer, and to suffer together." ( Pope Benedict XVI)

That last thought - that the capacity to love corresponds to the capacity to suffer - sounds so depressing and dismal. Yet, upon further reflection, I find it to be most true. Love requires sacrifice.

"Fragile persons of little generosity"
That struck me. I think that the world is populated with a lot of fragile persons with little generosity. Life has always been good so their capacity for empathy were never developed. In an effort to shield them from hardships, they were never taught to look beyond themselves. I think that it takes a person of faith to be able to look beyond one's current hardships as part of the bigger picture. If we see pain merely as pain leading to nothing more, we would naturally want to shield our children from that kind of pain. But if with eyes of faith, we see pain as part of a process, we would be more inclined to let our children experience it, knowing that it will strengthen them and bring about a greater good.