George Weigel

Contemporary Western culture doesn't have much truck with suffering. We avoid it if possible. We sequester it when it becomes unavoidable: How many of us will die at home? Embracing suffering is a concept alien to us. And yet suffering embraced in obedience to God's will is at the center of Christianity. The Christ whose passion more than a billion and a half Christians commemorate this week is not portrayed in the Gospels as someone to whom suffering just happened -- a prophet with the typical prophet's run of bad luck. The Christ of the Gospels reaches out and embraces suffering as his destiny, his vocation -- and is vindicated in that self-sacrifice on Easter.

From an article on Pope Saint John Paul II