Fr Carlo Cremona on Pain and Suffering

I've been looking for more Catholic resources on dealing with and responding to bereavement; and ran across this by

http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/hlthwork/documents/rc_pc_hlthwork_doc_05101997_cremona_en.html#top

It's titled "Care for the Sick and the Fathers of the Church," but really treats pain and suffering ina broader context.

Fr Cremona's work here may have suffered in translation, and definitely has serious problems regarding style, but of course that hardly begins to provide a fair response to this work. Because he writes with such depth of faith and breadth of enthusiasm that I for one found this to be enormously helpful.

As with others in our Faith, he emphasizes that Pain and Suffering are not to be simply resisted, but must ultimately be entered into, as Jesus Chose the Way of the Cross to Calvary.

So ... Pain ... I bid thee welcome.

Breathe in and breathe out. Breathe pain in, and breathe pain out. In and out till I become saturated with the pain that is the pain of the Cross, or rather the pain that is one microcosmic part of the Pain of the Cross, the Cross of Christ.