Padre Pio’s letter to Raffaelina Cerase, 1915: Take comfort because your suffering is in God’s will. If human nature is resentful of suffering and resists it. That is because human beings were created for happiness, and crosses are a consequence of sin. As long as we are on this earth, we will always feel a natural aversion to suffering. It is a chain that accompanies us everywhere we go.
You can be certain, however, that even if our disposition is to desire the cross and we willingly embrace it and submit to it out of love for God, that does not mean we will stop feeling nature’s demands in our flesh to not want to suffer. Who most loved the cross of the divine Master? Well, even he, in his most holy humanity during his freely chosen agony, prayed that the chalice be removed from him if possible.
—from the book Padre Pio’s Spiritual Direction for Every Day
by Gianluigi Pasquale and Marsha Daigle-Williamson Ph.D
