Category: SUFFERING & TRIBULATION

  • “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

  • “Don’t believe you have any virtue if it hasn’t caused you pain to acquire it. That’s a false virtue, since it was born out of comfort.”

    —Saint Mark the Ascetic

  • John Cassian, Institutes

    BOOK IX. OF THE SPIRIT OF DEJECTION.
    CHAPTER IV: Whence and in what way dejection arises. 

    “BUT Sometimes it is found to result from the fault of previous anger, or to spring from the desire of some gain which has not been realized, when a man has found that he has failed in his hope of securing those things which he had planned. But sometimes without any apparent reason for our being driven to fall into this misfortune, we are by the instigation of our crafty enemy suddenly depressed with so great a gloom that we cannot receive with ordinary civility the visits of those who are near and dear to us; and whatever subject of conversation is started by them, we regard it as ill-timed and out of place; and we can give them no civil answer, as the gall of bitterness is in possession of every corner of our heart.”

    CHAPTER V: That disturbances are caused in us not by the faults of other people, but by our own. 

    “WHENCE it is clearly proved that the pains of disturbances are not always caused in us by other people’s faults, but rather by our own, as we have stored up in ourselves the causes of offence, and the seeds of faults, which, as soon as a shower of temptation waters our soul, at once burst forth into shoots and fruits.”


    CHAPTER VII: That we ought not to give up intercourse with our brethren in order to seek after perfection, but should rather constantly cultivate the virtue of patience. 

    AND so God, the creator of all things, having regard above everything to the amendment of His own work, and because the roots and causes of our falls are found not in others, but in ourselves, commands that we should not give up intercourse with our brethren, nor avoid those who we think have been hurt by us, or by whom we have been offended, but bids us pacify them, knowing that perfection of heart is not secured by separating from men so much as by the virtue of patience. Which when it is securely held, as it can keep us at peace even with those who hate peace, so, if it has not been acquired, it makes us perpetually differ from those who are perfect and better than we are: for opportunities for disturbance, on account of which we are eager to get away from those with whom we are connected, will not be wanting so long as we are living among men; and therefore we shall not escape altogether, but only change the causes of dejection on account of which we separated from our former friends. 

    CHAPTER X: Of the only thing in which dejection is useful to us.
    AND so we must see that dejection is only useful to us in one case, when we yield to it either in penitence for sin, or through being inflamed with the desire of perfection, or the contemplation of future blessedness. And of this the blessed Apostle says: “The sorrow which is according to God worketh repentance steadfast unto salvation: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.”

    CHAPTER XIII: The means by which we can root out dejection from our hearts.
    WE should then be able to expel this most injurious passion from our hearts, so that by spiritual meditation we may keep our mind constantly occupied with hope of the future and contemplation of the promised blessedness. For in this way we shall be able to get the better of all those sorts of dejection, whether those which flow from previous anger or those which come to us from disappointment of gain, or from some loss, or those which spring from a wrong done to us, or those which arise from an unreasonable disturbance of mind, or those which bring on us a deadly despair, if, ever joyful with an insight into things eternal and future, and continuing immovable, we are not depressed by present accidents, or over-elated by prosperity, but look on each condition as uncertain and likely soon to pass away.

    Of the eight principal spirits or faults, dejection and acedia most effectively link the monastic world with today’s psychological suffering. The spirit or demon of dejection is described as one that attacks at random, and prevents the monk from having gladness of heart.[32] It makes the monk impatient and rough with the brethren and causes him to feel angry, crushing and overwhelming him with despair.[33] Cassian also locates the origin of dejection as being from “previous anger” or a previous “lack of gain that has not been realized.”[34] The monk isolates himself and no longer desires to engage in discourse with others, so that Cassian labels dejection the “gall of bitterness that is in possession of every corner of their heart.”[35] Interestingly, Cassian discusses how this demonic spirit is not necessarily a result of the actions of others, but actions of the self. Cassian elaborates that one in this state should not isolate himself, but rather continue to interact with his fellow monastic brethren. This in itself is a remedy against this spirit.[36] 

    …

    However, Cassian goes on to discuss that some dejection is acceptable and therapeutic. This is the sorrow that leads an individual to penitence for sin.[39] Finally, he ends the relevant chapter by noting that the way to terminate devilish dejection is spiritual meditation, and keeping the mind occupied with the hope of the future. In examining this chapter of Cassian’s work, clear symptoms emerge, as well as treatment modalities for what is considered depression in the modern world.

    …

    In Book X of the Institutes, Cassian begins to describe accidie, or acedia, known as the “midday demon,”[40] as Evagrius had also done, although in more detail in specific relation to the emotions.[41] While similar to the demon of dejection, acedia consists of the added features of apathy, sluggishness, sloth, and irritability. In naming acedia the “midday demon,” Cassian posits that these demonic attacks often occur around the sixth hour and seize the monk. Carelessness and anxiousness are the main components of acedia, as well as frequent complaining.[42] The monk looks anxiously and often sighs at his other brethren. There are also moments where he is idle and useless for spiritual work. Cassian notes that sometimes the midday demon can manifest in different forms: sometimes one may isolate more, and in other times one may become a busy-body and seek consolation from others — an action which Cassian describes as entanglement in secular business.[43] 

    …

    Cassian similarly recognized that often, anger and the lack of accomplishing a goal can lead to the demon of dejection. Anger and failure are, after all, often linked to stressful situations in an individual’s life.

    John Cassian, Diabolical Warfare, and Psychological Health
    Abraham Ghattas
    Doss Press

  • 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.

    Saint John Chrysostom, On the Vanity of Riches
    HOMILY ONE
    On Eutropios the eunuch, patrician, and consul

  • She hates her friends when they try to soften her grief; she will not take food, she wastes away, and in her soul’s deep dejection has a strong longing only for her death, a longing which often lasts till it comes.

    —St. Gregory of Nyssa, On Virginity, Chap. 3

  • Therefore, meditating upon these things, and considering how great is the reward for a painful and toilsome life, rejoice and be glad, since from your youth you have trod a path full of a myriad of crowns, making profit through your continual and multitudinous sufferings. For bodily infirmity, in all its various forms, is more grievous than a myriad of deaths, since without ceasing it continually beleaguers you. Being showered with abuses and outrages; bearing calumnies against yourself without a pause; being overwhelmed with continual, extreme sadness; and having fountains of tears throughout all this time-each one of these trials is sufficient by itself to procure great advantage to those who endure such things patiently.

    —Saint John Chrysostom, Letters to Saint Olympia

  • After endless depression, nights without sleep, realization that the life he had entered was calamitous, without hope, he slowly became lucid, even calm. He was able to read and think. The days dawned quietly. I am through it, he thought. Like the survivor of a wreck, he took stock of himself. He touched his limbs, his face, he began the essential process of forgetting what had passed. He was in a period of contentment with daily life, of peace. He looked about himself gratefully. It was still not completely real to him, it was a kind of scenery he watched like someone on a train, some of it vivid, going by, some of it bare.

    Light Years
    James Salter

  • “What do you do from morning to night?”

    “I endure myself.”

    The Trouble with Being Born
    Emil Cioran

  • Joyful persons do not necessarily make jokes, laugh, or even smile. They are not people with an optimistic outlook on life who always relativize the seriousness of a moment or an event. No, joyful persons see with open eyes the hard reality of human existence and at the same time are not imprisoned by it. They have no illusion about the evil powers that roam around, “looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8), but they also know that death has no final power. They suffer with those who suffer, yet they do not hold on to suffering; they point beyond it to an everlasting peace.

    —Henri Nouwen

  • “Nostalgia is denial, denial of the painful present.”

    — Paul, Midnight in Paris (2011)