“Those who can sit in silence with their fellow man, not knowing what to say, but knowing that they should be there, can bring new life in a dying heart.”
—Henri Nouwen,Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life
Category: BEST OF
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Still, when we honestly ask ourselves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving much advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a gentle and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not-curing, not-healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend who cares.
—Henri Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life
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God always helps. He always comes in time, but patience is necessary. He hears us immediately when we cry out to Him, but not in accordance with our own way of thinking. You think that your voice did not immediately reach the saints, our Panagia, and Christ. On the contrary, even before you cried out, the saints rushed to your aid, knowing that you would call upon them and seek their God-given protection. However, since you do not see beyond what is apparent and do not know how God governs the world, you want your request to be fulfilled like lightning. But this is not how things are. The Lord wants patience. He wants you to show your faith. You cannot just pray like a parrot. It is necessary also to work towards whatever one prays for, and then to learn to wait. You see that what you longed for in the past has finally happened. However, you were harmed because you didn’t have the patience to wait, in which case you would have gained both the one and the other: both the temporal and the eternal.
—Elder Joseph the Hesychast
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And if there’s one thing individuals considering suicide are short on, it’s patience—because of their willfulness. They’re like passengers aboard a transcontinental airplane flight who, halfway there, decide they can’t wait any longer to land, and want to jump out. Life is like that. It’s not finished yet, You don’t know the conclusion. The part of suicidal thinking that’s not so intelligent is deciding to judge life before you’ve let God in to heal it and make it meaningful.
—Dee Pennock, God’s Path to Sanity -
Metropolitan Tikhon of the Orthodox Church in America told this anecdote at his election. As a young monk he went to Mount Athos. While he was there, he encountered an old monk carrying a bag. The young monk, Tikhon, offered to carry the old man’s bag. The old man refused, saying, “No, I need to carry my own bag.” Metropolitan Tikhon said he learned a valuable lesson that day. He learned that he must carry his own bag. He also learned that he must allow others to carry their own bag. So, as a healing presence, we need to be present for others and allow them to carry their own bag and deal with their own issues, without trying to save them from their pain or control the outcome of their plight.
—Albert S. Rossi, Becoming a Healing Presence -
How often has the unexpected happened! How often has the expected never come to pass! And even though it is ordained to be, what does it avail to run out to meet your suffering? You will suffer soon enough, when it arrives; so look forward meanwhile to better things.
—Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
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She also said, ‘As long as we are in the monastery, obedience is preferable to asceticism. The one teaches pride, the other humility.’
Sayings of Amma Syncletica -
If you want to change and eliminate the problems which you have encountered because of your upbringing, enter into a loving relationship with God and others [in your life], and these problems will be resolved. When I learn how to love God, and train myself to love my brother, I will change and become conformed to the image of His Son.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality
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If you are suffering from a trial, which you are going through because of [your] upbringing and education, and if you endure this suffering with your true self and you expose it to the light of the grace of Christ, then Scripture says to you, “That you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”(James 1:4) The following will take place: your true self will grow and become complete and lacking nothing, through this suffering.
As for the grumbling soul, which is not joyful, but is always complaining about its upbringing in such a home, it will neither grow nor be healed.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality
SO GOOD QUOTES 