On this first Sunday of Lent, I share this quote from Dom Hubert van Zeller's Spirit of Penance: Path to God:

"'We preach Christ crucified,' says St. Paul, and if the followers of Christ seek to crucify themselves without Christ, they are wasting their sufferings. Suffering must not be wasted: it should be gathered up and offered in union with the sufferings of Christ. Few things are so uselessly squandered as the riches of pain. Leave the Passion out of account, and suffering is not a good but an evil; take the Passion as the foundation and principle of Christian penance, and suffering is of infinite worth." 

"Suffering is of infinite worth..." (Picture taken at the Cave of St. Mary Magdalen in France)