Category: SUFFERING & TRIBULATION

  • By enduring his tribulations with fortitude and acknowledging his Creator…a wise individual can benefit from all situations.

    —Clement of Alexandria

  • Just as a body left idle grows sickly and unattractive, exercise and labor make it healthy and attractive. The same applies to the soul: like iron left unused, it rusts, but when active, it shines brightly. Adversity keeps the soul in motion, just as arts perish without activity. Adverse circumstances stir the soul to action; without them, it would languish.

    —St. John Chrysostom

  • God dwells in those who have abhorred the world, and even themselves, and who have carried the cross. He feeds their souls with a joy that enriches them and makes them grow noticeably. Among those who accept this celestial joy are a few to whom God reveals His heavenly secrets. He also shows them their celestial positions while they are still in the body. Such people have boldness before Him and He gives them all that they ask for. They are gifted with talents and help people. In every generation, some people have reached that status. And the coming generations will continue to have examples of such people, not only among men, but also among women. Each one of them will be an example to his or her generation and condemn it, because these people struggled until they became perfect.

    —St. Anthony the Great

  • Let us then give diligent heed to the study of the Scriptures. For if you do this the Scripture will expel your despondency and engender pleasure, extirpate vice and make virtue take root, and in the tumult of life it will save you from suffering like those who are tossed by troubled waves. The sea rages but you sail on with calm weather for you have the study of the Scriptures for your pilot; for this is the cable which the trials of life do not break asunder. Now events themselves bear witness that I lie not.

    Saint John Chrysostom
    HOMILY TWO, After Eutropios, having been found outside the church, was taken captive
    On the Vanity of Riches

  • Now if after thirty-eight years he was thus meek and gentle, when all the vigor and strength of his reasoning faculties was broken down, consider what he is likely to have been at the outset of his trouble. For be assured that invalids are not so hard to please at the beginning of their disorder, as they are after a long lapse of time: they become most intractable, most intolerable to all, when the malady is prolonged. But as he, after so many years, was so wise and replied with so much forbearance, it is quite clear that during the previous time also he had been bearing that calamity with much thankfulness.

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

  • For as a gold refiner having cast a piece of gold into the furnace allows it to be proved by the fire until such time as he sees it has become purer, even so God permits the souls of men to be tested by troubles until they become pure and transparent and have reaped much profit from this process of sifting: wherefore this is the greatest kind of benefit.

    Let us not then be disturbed, neither dismayed, when trials befall us. For if the gold refiner sees how long he ought to leave the piece of gold in the furnace and when he ought to draw it out, and does not allow it to remain in the fire until it is destroyed and burnt up, much more does God understand this, and when He sees that we have become purer, He releases us from our trials so that we may not be overthrown and cast down by the multiplication of our evils. Let us then not be complaining or faint-hearted when some unexpected thing befalls us; but let us allow Him Who knows these things accurately to prove our hearts by fire as long as He pleases: for He does this for a useful purpose and with a view to the profit of those who are tried.

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

  • I was becoming more miserable, and Thou nearer.

    Confessions
    St. Augustine

  • It is important, then, that your spiritual senses be trained to recognize God’s voice calling you to return to Him. Therefore you must correlate whatever you go through—whether disease, troubles, or problems—with your relationship with God. Make all of them an occasion to strengthen your fellowship with Him, to deepen your prayers and increase your love for God.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, The Life of Repentance and Purity

  • All of these punishments on earth are different from the eternal punishment. The eternal punishment is eliminated by repentance, but the earthly punishment remains intact. So the mother who does not bring up her son properly repents and her sins are forgiven, but her son remains as a bitterness of heart to her on earth. The student who does not study and fails can repent and the Lord will forgive him for his negligence, but this does not bring back a year of his life lost on earth in vain. The person for whom since causes disease can be forgiven his sin by repentance, but the disease remains with him as an earthly punishment as a natural result of sin.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, The Life of Repentance and Purity

  • You are passing through a time of deep sorrow. The love on which you were trusting has suddenly failed you, and dried up like a brook in the desert—now a dwindling stream, then shallow pools, and at last drought. You are always listening for footsteps that do not come, waiting for a word that is not spoken, pining for a reply that tarries overdue.

    Perhaps the savings of your life have suddenly disappeared; instead of helping others, you must be helped, or you must leave the warm nest where you have been sheltered from life’s storms to go alone into an unfriendly world; or you are suddenly called to assume the burden of some other life, taking no rest for yourself till you have steered it through dark and difficult seas into the haven. Your health, or sight, or nervous energy is failing; you carry in yourself the sentence of death; and the anguish of anticipating the future is almost unbearable. In other cases there is the sense of recent loss through death, like the gap in the forest-glade, where the woodsman has lately been felling trees.

    At such times life seems almost insupportable. Will every day be as long as this? Will the slow moving hours ever again quicken their pace? Will life ever array itself in another garb than the torn autumn remnants of past summer glory? Hath God forgotten to be gracious? Hath He in anger shut up His tender mercies? Is His mercy clean gone for ever?

    The Gift of Suffering
    by F.B. Meyer