The Lord did not create suffering. (…)
But after man had chosen suffering in preference to the joys of union with God, the Lord turned suffering itself into a way by which man could come to the perfect knowledge of God.
Thomas Merton OCSO – religious name M. Louis, American Trappist monk, writer, and mystic (1915-1968), from “No man is an island”, chapter V “The Word of the Cross”, 12 (1955)