Aside from a post for Pentecost Sunday, the main focus of the quotes posted to social media (Facebook, Instagram, X) this past week was on how the person who suffers must never be thought to be praying less.

Take note of the root that flourishes in soil so rocky that it is almost impossible to plough. Still, it produces perfect fruit, good to the taste. You are that soil, beaten upon, as you are, by heavy storms of war and by the evil winds raised up by the devil. Yet… you will remain steadfast. — Saint Hildegard of Bingen

Because he is so helpless, a little child always turns toward his father. He is too weak and too little to have a will of his own or to want anything that his father does not want. How touching is this trust in his father. Have you ever seen that often repeated gesture of a young father pretending to toss his little child out over a cliff? And the child laughs and laughs because he knows well that no harm can ever come to him from his father. — Little Sister Madgeleine of Jesus

You have taught me the secret to suffer in peace. Peace does not mean joy, at least not sensible joy. To suffer in peace, all I have to do is to will all that You, O Lord, will. — Saint Thérèse of Lisieux

Sacrifice is an absolutely universal law for the perfecting of the creature. Everything which passes from a lower nature to a higher nature has to pass through self-sacrifice, mortification, and death. The mineral assimilated by the plant becomes living matter. The vegetable which is consumed is transformed in the animal into sensible living matter. The man who yields up his whole soul to God through the obedience of faith finds it again in glory. The angel who has renounced the natural light of his intelligence to plunge himself into the darkness of faith has found the splendour of divine light. — Raïssa Maritain

It shouldn’t be thought that he who suffers isn’t praying, for he is offering this to God. And often he is praying much more than the one who is breaking his head in solitude, thinking that if he has squeezed out some tears he is thereby praying. — Saint Teresa of Avila

The activity of the Holy Spirit in the soul produces an inflamed love in which the will of the soul becomes one single love in union with the divine flame. — Saint Teresa Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)