Category: BEST OF

  • And you, therefore, if you stay in your house, if you are held fast in your bed, do not think that you are living an unproductive life.

    For you are enduring something more grievous than what you have suffered at the hands of public torturers, by whom you have been dragged, savagely attacked, stretched to the utmost-and that is this extreme infirmity of yours, which is like having a public torturer continually residing in your house. But do not therefore either desire your end or neglect your health; for that is not safe. Therefore Paul heartily advises Timothy to take the greatest care of himself. But about your illness—it’s enough to say these things.

    —Saint John Chrysostom, Letters to Saint Olympia

  • Do not, therefore, imagine that the struggle now set before you is small; for dealing with bodily illness is more exalted a contest than all the things that you have endured, as I have said.

    —Saint John Chrysostom, Letters to Saint Olympia

  • Cease, therefore, your crying, and stop torturing yourself with grief. And do not look only upon the torments that have been afflicting you ceaselessly one after another, but also consider the swiftness with which you have been freed from them, and the ineffable reward and recompense that they bring.

    —Saint John Chrysostom, Letters to Saint Olympia

  • “I spent these past two months no better than dead—yea, even worse than dead. I was surviving just enough to perceive the terrible things encircling me everywhere. All was night to me—the day, the dawn, the height of noonday—and I spent the whole time nailed to my bed.”

    —Saint John Chrysostom, Letters to Saint Olympia

  • Though you may be dead for a little while, He will raise you to life again.

    —St. Augustine

  • “You do not know what is good for you: health or sickness.”  

    —St. Basil the Great

  • After he witnessed the torments she went through, the elder sighed and wondered how it was possible for a young woman to withstand so much suffering. Her response was: “Father, for the kingdom of heaven, that was nothing. Had I known at the time what awaited me in God I would have tolerated infinitely more.”

    Orthodox Afterlife
    John Habib

  • How can you find out if you are living within the will of God? Here is the sign: If you are troubled about anything, this means that you have not completely given yourself over to the will of God. A person who lives in the will of God is not concerned over anything. And if he needs anything, he gives both it and himself over to God. And if he does not receive the necessary thing, he remains calm nevertheless, as if he had it. The soul which has been given over to the will of God is afraid of nothing, not of thunder nor of thieves – nothing. But whatever happens, she says, “Thus it pleases God.” If she is sick, she thinks: this means that I need to be sick, or else God would not have given it to me. Thus peace is preserved in both soul and body. 

    —St. Silouan the Athonite

  • There is scarce any one who desires to serve God, but does so for selfish reasons; we expect gain and not loss, consolation and not suffering, riches and not poverty, increase and not diminution. But the whole interior work is of an opposite character; to be lost, sacrificed, made less than nothing, and despoiled of an excessive delight, even in the gifts of God, that we may be forced to cling to Him alone.

    —Francois Fenelon, Spiritual Progress

  • You should dwell on something exactly to the point that dwelling on it further doesn’t do you any good.

    —Bret Weinstein