It is necessary to go from total selfishness to sacrificial love that is no longer focused at all on self, in the image of God’s own great love. This is the progress of the smallest creature toward the infinity of heaven…Such an evolution would normally take an extremely long time. But everything happens as though God were in a hurry. Therefore, we should not be surprised if this accelerated course is rather rough. Life is too short to complete such an important journey! If you look at it from the perspective of eternity, our life is only a brief instant. But that does not prevent us from feeling that it is long, especially if one is suffering. Let us keep this difference in mind; it will help us to understand. When we have gone over to God’s side, we will see things just as he does. Jesus explained this: A woman who is giving birth is in pain because her hour has come. But when the infant is born, she no longer remembers her suffering, because she is happy that a child is born into the world (John 16:21).

—Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise