Thus to share in the sufferings of Christ is, at the same time, to suffer for the kingdom of God. In the eyes of the just God, before his judgment. Those who share in the sufferings of Christ become worthy of this kingdom.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the value of suffering for a greater cause, namely the kingdom of God, suggesting that shared suffering leads to spiritual worthiness.
Pope John Paul II highlights that participating in the sufferings of Christ is inherently linked to contributing to the kingdom of God. It suggests that enduring hardships and challenges alongside Christ not only solidifies one's faith but also ensures a place in the divine judgment, thus elevating the experience of suffering into a sacred duty that enriches the believer's spiritual journey.
In practice
In a sermon discussing the nature of faith and sacrifice, this quote can highlight the virtue of enduring hardship.
True freedom is not advanced in the permissive society, which confuses freedom with license to do anything whatever and which in the name of freedom proclaims a kind of general amorality. It is a caricature of freedom to claim that people are free to organize their lives with no reference to moral values, and to say that society does not have to ensure the protection and advancement of ethical values. Such an attitude is destructive of freedom and peace.
Like so many pilgrims before us, we kneel in wonder and adoration before the ineffable mystery which. was accomplished here... In This Child - the Son who is given to us - we find rest for our souls and the true bread that never fails - the Eucharistic Bread foreshadowed even in the name of this town: Bethlehem, the house of bread. God lies hidden in the Child; divinity lies hidden in the Bread of Life
And everything else will then turn out to be unimportant and inessential except this: father, child, and love. And then, looking at the simplest things, we will all say, Could we have not learned this long ago? Has this not always been embedded in everything that is?
Do not abandon yourselves to despair. We are the Easter people and hallelujah is our song.
Man matures through work which inspires him to difficult good.
United with the angels and saints of the heavenly Church, let us adore the most Holy Sacrament of the Eucharist. Prostrate, we adore this great mystery that contains God's new and definitive covenant with humankind in Christ.
It is not greedy to enjoy a good dinner, any more than it is to enjoy a good concert. But I do think there is something greedy about trying to enjoy the dinner and the concert at the same time.
Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.
On the other hand, the concept owes its meaning and its justification exclusively to the totality of the sense impressions which we associate with it.
Philosophy is tested and characterised by the way in which it appropriates its history.
I was not born for one corner. The whole world is my native land.
There are some who maintain that trade will regulate itself, and it is not to be benefited by the encouragements or restraints of government. Such persons will imagine that there is no need of a common directing power. This is one of those wild speculative paradoxes, which have grown into credit among us, contrary to the uniform practice and sense of the most enlightened nations.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.