We must aim most at compassion for others when we are suffering most ourselves. This is the way to gain the peculiar graces of suffering. Grace and nature are almost always at cross purposes. Because Moses had the hastiest of tempers, he became the meekest of men. So sorrow naturally shuts us up in ourselves, and concentrates us upon itself, while grace forces us to become more considerate because we are suffering, and to go out of ourselves, and to pour out upon others, as a libation before God, all that tenderness and pity which nature would make us lavish upon ourselves.
--
Father Faber
