Vatican Saying 4

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Translation

Every pain is easily disregarded; for any intense pain is brief, and the suffering brought on by a physical pain that lasts long is slight.

Analysis

Closely related to Principal Doctrine 4, of which it is a summary, this Saying expresses much the same idea: sharp pain is brief, while lasting pain is slight; therefore all pain is easy to disregard, either way.

The meaning comes across most immediately if one bypasses the semantic proximity of algedon and ponos (both of which mean "pain" in English, thus seeming redundant) and reads "pain" once, uniformly.

This Saying does, however, indulge in a clever word-play, between syntonos (meaning "intense") and syntomos (meaning "brief"). We will never know which author this verbal playfulness originated with.