How wonderful it is -- is it not? -- that literally only
Christianity has taught us the true place and function of
suffering. The Stoics tried the hopeless little game of
denying its objective reality, or of declaring it a good in
itself (which it never is); and the Pessimists attempted to
revel in it, as a food to their melancholy, and as something
that can no more be transformed than it can be avoided or
explained. But Christ came, and He did not really explain it;
He did far more: He met it, willed it, transformed it; and He
taught us to do all this -- or, rather, He Himself does it
within us, if we do not hinder the all-healing hands.
Friedrich von Huegel
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