"The first cause of the Passion," says St. Thomas Aquinas, "was that He wished it to be known how much God loved man."
. . . Punishment and pain in general, far too frequently, embitter the heart, turn it from its last end, and harden it in perversity. But if a man under suffering have the light and the grace to accept it in submission, in resignation, and with a closer movement to the bosom of our heavenly Father, then never, never has his love of that Father in heaven been more thorough, more effective, and more intense. It need not be added that this mysterious element of suffering with which Jesus willed to raise to a whiter heat the acts of His sacred Heart, is also marvelously adapted to draw to Him the hearts of all men.
-- Bishop Hedley,
A Retreat
