A man runs endlessly to God and demands, requires benefits: happiness, contentment, health. He runs up to God with his need, but does not live by Him, and every time he receives what he is asking for, he returns to his usual former sinful life. And this barren crush of a man near God more and more often causes in leper souls grumbling at his Creator, grumbling at everything. Then God becomes guilty of everything: it is He who does not respond to requests, requirements, this He does not give a person the fullness of life’s happiness. But the fact that man himself does not live according to the instructions of God and in the law of God, that he reaps the bitterness of a life destroyed by his own iniquities, does not come to his mind.

He does not have a true faith, a true life of spirit, and his life path will not end in salvation. That’s all! How clear and simple!

—Archimandrite John Krestiankin

Although it may be difficult to accept the concept of finding fortune in suffering, after death we will know and even wish we could have endured more hardship because of the glory we would have received in Paradise.

Orthodox Afterlife
John Habib

We think that having faith is just being optimistic, but what happens if it doesn’t get better? Our faith is most defined in the season of enduring strife. Suffering reveals what we have tied our faith to.

—Fr. Nathanael Guirguis

Why ask this question [why]? ‘Why did this happen? Why me? Why her? Why?’ 

Why are we asking these questions? These are questions from lack of faith. We shouldn’t have idly curious questions. You don’t need to know why you got sick. You just need to know that you should bear your illness with courage and with patience and with humility. And then in the next life, you will have no sickness and no sorrow, and I guarantee you will never ask why in heaven.


—Fr. Seraphim Holland


St. Paul did not find his joy in ideal circumstances, but he found his joy in winning others to Christ.

—Fr. Paul Girguis


“How close God is to us when we come to recognize and to accept our abjection and to cast our care entirely upon HIm! Against all human expectation He sustains us when we need to be sustained, helping us to do what seemed impossible. We learn to know Him, now, not in the ‘presence’ that is found in abstract consideration – a presence in which we dress Him in our own finery – but in the emptiness of a hope that may come close to despair. For perfect hope is achieved on the brink of despair when, instead of falling over the edge, we find ourselves walking on the air. Hope is always just about to turn into despair, but never does so, for at the moment of supreme crisis God’s power is suddenly made perfect in our infirmity. So we learn to expect His mercy almost calmly when all is most dangerous, to seek Him quietly in the face of peril, certain that He cannot fail us though we may be upbraided by the just and rejected by those who claim to hold the evidence of His love.”

—Thomas Merton

The best form of mortification is to accept with all our heart, in spite of our repugnance, all that God sends or permits, good and evil, joy and suffering…I find absolute submission to God’s will a sovereign remedy in every trouble, and when I consider that in reality God’s will is God Himself, I see that this submission is but the supreme adoration due to God, due to Him in whatever manner He may manifest Himself.

—C. Marmion