Consider that this life is given us as a preparation time for obtaining great graces needful for another and eternal life. Let us look upon the world, as we pass through it, in this light. Its sights of sorrows are to calm us, and to call out kind affections. Its pleasant sights are to try us, and produce self-restraint; both are to excite our thankfulness to God. Let us endeavour to be as that angel who could descend among the miseries and mercies of Bethesda without any loss of his own purity, or equable happiness. Let us gain healing for our souls from the troubled waters we see around us. Make up your minds to have to sustain a certain measure of pain and trouble in your daily passage through life. This will, by the help of God, prepare you for it, and make you thoughtful, and patiently resigned, without preventing your cheerfulness. It will connect you with the saints of the Church, whose lot it was, with scarcely an exception, to be patterns, and admirable ones, of patient endurance, and this sense of association with them may bring you a special consolation. View yourselves as following Jacob, whose days were few and evil, and David, who in his best estate, was as a shadow that declineth, and Elijah, who despised soft raiment and sumptuous fare, and captive Daniel, who led an angelic life in an heathen land and a godless court, and be light-hearted and content, because you are thus called to be members of Christ's Pilgrim Church. Rejoice in this world, not so much because it is yours, but because it is not. We also, having so great a cloud of witnesses over our head, laying aside every weight and sin which surrounds us, let us run by patience to the fight proposed to us, looking on Jesus.
- text taken from Daily Bread - Bring a Few Morning Meditations for the Use of Catholic Christians by Father Richard Waldo Sibthorp