Category: FAITH

  • we need to be persistent in seeking the will of God. When we are persistence and seeking His will and seeking His guidance, He told us, “Ask, and you will receive.” Also, the Lord said to us, “Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. This means that if you seek the kingdom of God and His righteousness, if you live righteously, God will reveal to you in a way or another His will in everything else. Seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. And here is the rule, one rule that is very important: if you are faithful and honest in keeping the general will of God— to do good, sanctification, abstain from sexual immorality, giving thanks in everything—if you are faithful in this area, then God will reveal to you His will in other areas. But if you are not faithful but are careless about fulfilling the will of God in this general area, why would God reveal to you His will in other areas. So, the more you are faithful, the more the will of God will be revealed to you regarding the specific questions.

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Know the Will of God

  • Hope is a trust in God, that the Lord will take me out of this problem and will give me the grace of endurance, or He will defend me even after many years. After the cross, there is resurrection, and after darkness, there is light. Have hope in the Lord even if all doors are closed shut. As we have previously mentioned concerning the events of 1981, with the mind it was hopeless, but the Lord is our hope: “The hope of those who have no hope and the help of those who have no helper”‘!? For if you have no help, the Lord is your helper. If you are thinking, “How will these issues be resolved? The person who is causing trouble, how will he change?” Our Lord is the hope: “The hope of those who have no hope and the help of those who have no helper.”

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Endure Injustice

  • When we become unduly distressed at falling ill, we should recognize that our soul is still the slave of bodily desires and so longs for physical health, not wishing to lose the good things of this life and even finding it a great hardship not to be able to enjoy them because of illness. If, however, the soul accepts thankfully the pains of illness, it is clear that it is not far from the realm of dispassion; as a result it even waits joyfully for death as the entry into a life that is more true.

    —St. Diadochus

  • But if we looked to the tribulation through a perspective that is heavenly, eternal, we would see the tribulation as it really is: light and transient. And as our teacher Pope Shenouda III said, “It is bound to end. It is all for the good.”

    —H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Pray

  • FOR all the long years of this present life disappear when you have regard to the eternity of the future glory: and all our sorrows vanish away in the contemplation of that vast bliss, and like smoke melt away, and come to nothing, and like ashes are no more seen.

    John Cassian, Institutes
    CHAPTER XII: That no toil is worthy to be compared with the promised bliss. 

  • “Our circumstances don’t change, but we change.

    The Lord said we *will* have tribulation and that we *may* have peace.”

    —Fr. Daniel Fanous

  • Let us then follow whithersoever He bids us, and let us not too carefully consider whether He commands us to go by a smooth and easy path or by a difficult and rugged one, as in the case of this paralytic.

    Saint John Chrysostom
    On the Two Paralytics in the Gospels
    Homilies on Profitable Subjects

  • In order that you may learn, from another angle, what the gain of sufferings is, even if one does not suffer for God—and no one would consider this to be an exaggeration—if one suffers and bears it nobly, and with meekness glorifies God for everything, he will be rewarded. Even Job did not know that he suffered those things for God—and indeed, this is why he was crowned, because he endured them nobly, not knowing the reason for his sufferings.

    —Saint John Chrysostom, Letters to Saint Olympia

  • So then, expect great rewards for such torture-many prizes; recompense beyond description; brilliant, abundantly blossoming crowns for such agony. For it is not only for the good one does, but also for the evil one suffers, that one obtains many rewards and great prizes.

    —Saint John Chrysostom, Letters to Saint Olympia

  • Many are the tribulations that ended good. Live them in hope and faith in the good that is about to come and not in the distress that is already here.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Words of Spiritual Benefit Vol. IV