I was at Knock Shrine a few years ago and found a rose on the ground. It was not the season for roses. I put it in my pocket and didn't think any more about it. Later on I met a priest and got a prompt to give him the rose. He then said he had just finished a novena to St. Therese.
I dislocated my shoulder one time and the Doctor told me that the three worst pains in order are child birth. Burns. Dislocated shoulder. Anyone who has ever dislocated his shoulder can confirm this. I cannot imagine what child birth is like then. A dislocated shoulder is a horror.
Jesus told several saints / mystics that the worst pain in His passion was from His shoulder. He would have suffered a double dislocation when He was crucified.
Your doc probably never had kidney stones! I was in A and E with them some years ago. I found myself crawling on the floor under the seats with people kicking me to get out of their space. I didn't care, anything to try to ease the pain which can last for hours and incidentally doesn't ease no matter what position one tries.
I had heard they can be excruciating. Thankfully, I haven't experienced kidney stones or the pains listed by Padraig above. Not to make light of it but your story reminded me of something I heard a while back, a variation on the adage: "This too shall pass...it may be like a kidney stone but it shall pass."
Oh no! Save me from kidney stones. When St Therese was dying of TB the Prioress of her convent refused to pay for Morphine for poor Therese on money saving grounds. She looked at the saint and reckoned that she was not suffering so much. I hear the effect of last stage TB is rather like sucking in glass with each breath. Therese herself famously said , 'I never knew it was possible to suffer so much!! Never! Never! Never!' It was clear that she was tempted strongly to suicide. St Bernadette suffered from bone cancer of her leg and never looked treatment. The Doctor said her pain was, 'Unimaginable' Something one of the nuns who nursed St Teresa of the Andes said caught me attention. She said, 'The holy ones always get hard deaths'. This seems so true. In fact I would say we expect great suffering in the lives of the saint as a matter of course.
