S Rose of Lima: "regarding your endurance and faith in all your persecutions and the afflictions you endure"

This is evidence of the just judgment of God,
so that you may be considered worthy of the Kingdom of God for which you are suffering.

-- 2 Thes1:1-5, 11-12

Moved by so much suffering Christ not only allows himself to be touched by the sick, but he makes their miseries his own: "He took our infirmities and bore our diseases." But he did not heal all the sick. His healings were signs of the coming of the Kingdom of God. They announced a more radical healing: the victory over sin and death through his Passover. On the cross Christ took upon himself the whole weight of evil and took away the "sin of the world," of which illness is only a consequence. By his passion and death on the cross Christ has given a new meaning to suffering: it can henceforth configure us to him and unite us with his redemptive Passion. (CCC 1505)

From Saint Rose of Lima:

Apart from the cross there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven. (CCC 618)
When her mother reproached her for caring for the poor and the sick at home, St. Rose of Lima said to her: "When we serve the poor and the sick, we serve Jesus. We must not fail to help our neighbors, because in them we serve Jesus." (CCC 2449)