St. Faustina said, “Suffering is a great grace; through suffering the soul becomes like the Saviour; in suffering love becomes crystallized; the greater the suffering, the purer the love.”
The Second Letter to the Corinthians allows us to know the inner life of the Apostle Paul. In Chapter 12 St. Paul shared the visions and revelations he received and the “thorn in the flesh” which helped to keep him humble.
St. Paul wrote, “I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows … On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses” (2 Cor 12:2, 5).
St. Thomas Aquinas commented: “For it should be noted that there are two things to consider in man, namely, the gift of God and the human condition. If a person glories in a gift of God as received from God, that glorying is good … But if he glories in that gift as though he had it of himself, then such glorying is evil.”
St. Paul shared his weaknesses writing: “So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited” (2 Cor 12:7).
St. Augustine pointed out that the providence of God draws good out of evil: “‘And so,’ they ask, ‘is the devil good because he is useful?’ On the contrary, he is evil insofar as he is the devil, but God who is good and almighty draws many just and good things out of the devil’s malice. For the devil has to his credit only his will by which he tries to do evil, not the providence of God that draws good out of him.”
Even though Paul was a saint, his prayer was not answered when he prayed that the “thorn in the flesh” be removed: “Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Cor 12:8–9).
Reflecting on his own experience of suffering, Venerable Fulton Sheen wrote, “The first lesson I learned, but only gradually, is that all sufferings come from either the direct or the permissive Will of God. God has two kinds of medicines, bitter and sweet. Job asks if God gives good things why can he not also give us trials. St. Paul suffered during his whole apostolic life from what some translations call ‘a thorn in the flesh.’ The original Greek word is skolops, which means a stake. No one knows precisely what it was and though St. Paul prayed to have it removed, the Lord refused to do so, as he refused to remove stuttering from the speech of Moses.”
The sixth century Cassiodorus commented on the advantage of unanswered prayer: “Paul begged that the flesh’s thorn be removed from him, but he was not heard by the Lord. The devil prayed that he might strike Job with the harshest of disasters, and we know that this was subsequently granted him. But Paul was denied the fulfilment of his prayer for his glory, whereas the devil was granted his for the devil’s pain. Thus it is often an advantage not to be heard even though postponement of our desires depresses us.”
St. Jerome said, “The Lord is good because he often does not give us what we desire, in order to give us something we would prefer.”
The Lord said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor 12:9). St. John Chrysostom commented: “God’s power of deliverance is shown, and the gospel triumphs in spite of persecution. The more the trials increased, the more grace increased as well.”
St. Faustina said, “Suffering is a great grace; through suffering the soul becomes like the Saviour; in suffering love becomes crystallized; the greater the suffering, the purer the love.”