Tell Me Any Materialist Who Has Ever Come Up With More Helpful Ideas For Someone In the Midst Of Terrible Pain

God's love doesn't protect us from suffering,  God's love protects us in the midst of suffering.  Hans Kung

and he also said:

In the last resort, a love of God without a love of humanity is no love at all. 

and

I am firmly convinced that there is life after death, nor in a primitive sense but as the entry of my completely finite person into the infinity of God, as a transition into another reality beyond the dimension of space and time that pure reason can neither confirm nor deny. 

and 

I don't cling to earthly life because I believe in eternal life. That's the big distinction between my point of view and a purely secular position.