Hello, I'm Father Joe Roche of the Marrient Fathers of the Immaculate Conception.

Thank you for joining us as we continue with our year-long journey,

reading the diary of St. Maria Faustina Kowalska from beginning to end.

Today we take up from where we left off, beginning with diary entry number 342.

Suffering is the greatest treasure on earth. It purifies the soul.

In suffering we learn who is our true friend.

True love is measured by the thermometer of suffering.

Jesus, I thank you for the little daily crosses,

for opposition to my endeavors,

for the hardships of communal life,

for the misinterpretation of my intentions,

for humiliations at the hands of others, for the harsh way in which we are treated,

for false suspicions, for poor health and loss of strength, for self-denial, for dying to

myself, for lack of recognition in everything, for the upsetting of all my plans.

Thank you, Jesus, for interior sufferings, for dryness of spirit, for terrors, fears and

incertitudes, for the darkness and the deep interior night,

for temptations and various ordeals,

for torments too difficult to describe,

especially for those which no one will understand,

for the hour of death with its fierce struggle

and all its bitterness. I thank you, Jesus,

you who first drank the cup of bitterness before you gave it to me, in a much milder form. I put my

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