The merit of a soul that loved Jesus Christ come from loving and suffering. Here is what the Lord said to Saint Teresa: “My daughter, do you think that that merit consist in enjoyment? No, it consists in suffering and in loving. Look at my life, so full of affliction. Be sure, daughter, that the more my Father loves anyone, the more distress he sends to that person; it is a measure of his love. Look at these wounds, your sufferings will never match them.” “It is a great mistake to think that my Father welcomes as friends those who are strangers to suffering.” And Saint Teresa adds for our consolation: “God never sends a trial without immediately compensating for it by some favor.”

One day Jesus Christ appeared to the Blessed Battista Varani, and told her of three great favors that he does for his beloved souls: the first enables them not to sin; the second, still greater, is to do good works; the third, and the greatest of all, is to suffer for his love. Saint Teresa used to say that whenever anyone does something for God, the Lord repays him or her with some affliction And therefore, when they suffered any trouble, the saints thanked God for it. Speaking of his bondage in Turkey, Saint Louis of France said: “I rejoice, and thank God more for the patience he gave me in the time of my imprisonment than if I had acquired all the earth.” And when, after her husband’s death, Saint Elizabeth, princess of Thuringia was banished from the country along with her son, and found herself homeless and abandoned by everyone, she went to a Franciscan monastery, and there she had a Te Deum sung in thanks to Gof for favoring her by making her suffer for love of him.

- pg 46  The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ by Saint Alphonsus Liguori