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No matter how much confusion or uncertainty we experience - even in sickness or danger - there is one, living God in control of the Universe, in Whose care we live. Whether we live or die, we live and die at times appointed by Him, even when we object.

Christ looks with great tenderness and love upon us all; yet He helps with especial care all who are too sick or weak to give much time to prayer. It is as if He gently lays them down, and invites them to rest in His presence, knowing that they are loved.

When a family member is in very poor health, it is important that people in a Christian family actively prepare for death, turn to the Lord in trust, speak truthfully to one another, and act with sensitivity and the gentleness.

As a drug-user suffers when his supply of drugs is withdrawn, and his whole body cries out for its former source of pleasure and well-being, so a soul in Hell suffers - because of his own free choices - when, in Hell, he is suddenly without all those things that make it pleasurable and joyful to be a human being. He is without light, love, joy, peace, beauty, comfort or tenderness - all through his own fault, by his sinful choices.

A mother with a seriously-sick child keeps loving her. She would do nothing to harm her. She would not kill her, however - just as God does not kill the people He loves, even when they have freely chosen to abandon Him, hate Him, and then find themselves in Hell, suffering from the absence of light and love.

Christ said that by offering up our sufferings in union with Him, in intercession for others, we can (by His grace) save people from committing mortal sin, or save sinners who are dying from falling unrepentant into Hell.

Just as a dying sinner can (by God's grace) be saved from Hell by the visit of a charitable person, such as a nurse, for example, who pauses to pray with him, so sinners can be held back from committing mortal sin if we pause to 'offer up' our sufferings in intercession.

Christ said that by offering up our sufferings in union with Him, in intercession for others, we can (by His grace) save people from committing mortal sin, or save sinners who are dying from falling unrepentant into Hell.

Christ told me how little the Cross is mentioned by preachers and teachers today: the Cross on which He suffered because of the grievous sins no longer mentioned. He is grieving, too, because people say that devotion to His Mother is old fashioned, and because Catholic school children are often taught more about self-esteem than humility.

Christ bore horrible insults in His Passion, as He was mocked by the soldiers for His preaching, His claim to be the Son of God, His Galilean background, and also His purity and innocence.

When God allows us to endure suffering, we must remember that He can bring good out of every evil, including sickness. We please Him if we refrain from complaining when things are painful or inconvenient. By patience we respect the Father's Will and imitate Christ in His obedience.

Even many Catholics grumble and complain when they are asked to bear things which are painful or inconvenient. This shows a lack of understanding, or a lack of love for the Will of the Father, Who invites us to imitate the patience and trust of His Son.

If we 'offer up' our sufferings in union with Christ, interceding for sinners, we can help people who have not yet heard Christ's message, and have not yet repented. By the grace of Christ, we can help save those people who would otherwise fall into Hell, far below the glory of Heaven.

We can be helped to bear painful memories if we notice the spiritual growth that was the result of accepting and offering up those trials in union with Christ - even those caused by our own foolishness. All seems disastrous when a flower bud splits open; but only by that 'injury' can a beautiful flower emerge.

St. Catherine of Sienna, who lived in a street I once saw, believed in the Father's goodness. She obeyed Him. She prayed with faith, and was answered like the Apostles in earlier times; she put her trust in God even when He led her through suffering in the course of her particular vocation; yet her reward was Heaven.

The sick can exercise great spiritual power, with Christ. Those who resolve to be patient and to accept a special vocation can work for God and the Church, in and through their sufferings. By God's grace they can accept without resentment their pains and humiliations, as a penance for themselves and to help save other souls, in union with Christ Who won salvation for us by His patient love, in accepting the Cross.

The sick have great work to do for God! Christ asked me to speak the truth to the other sick and handicapped people I meet: I should say that we are all called to be Saints. We can accept our unavoidable sufferings and offer them up in union with Christ on the Cross, and pray with Him for sinners to repent and find forgiveness and peace.

If we have Christ as our Saviour we have Him with us at all times, for example, on all our journeys and in every danger or time of apprehension; and He can always be met in the Blessed Sacrament, in a special way.

God has permitted capital punishment at certain times, for grave crimes. Yet the human race has been in such a dire state of sinfulness, since the Original Sin, that in whatever era of history Christ might have come to earth to speak the truth about sin and salvation, He would have been persecuted, and then killed by whatever method was usual at the time, despite His innocence.

Even someone as selfless and Christ-centered as Mother Teresa had to undergo - for her soul's sake - a long period in interior darkness. God provided her with this spiritual purification to make her perfect, as her order expanded and she experienced outward success and adulation as well as opposition.