Category: SUFFERING & TRIBULATION

  • When looking at our personal circumstances, then, we never measure them by someone else’s circumstances. The teaching of our holy counselors is: Do not compare yourself to others in anything (Barsanuphius). Just compare your performance (your response to God’s calling and purpose for you, they say, with the gifts you have been given to enable you to obey that calling. Then instead of regretting that we do not have the good fortune some others have, our only regrets are for occasions when we’ve failed to use the gifts God has given us to fulfill the blessed purpose for which he has called us.

    We are all called to overcome different obstacles. You are called that you should inherit a blessing (I Pet. 3:9), says the Bible. Some people are called to overcome psychological problems, some physical illnesses, some persecution, some slavery, some injustices of all kinds, some martyrdom.

    —Dee Pennock, God’s Path to Sanity

  • Our various trials and weaknesses and disadvantages are perfectly in proportion to our callings and our given abilities—those gifts, that grace has put into each of us to handle our life circumstances so we can succeed in fulfilling God’s purpose for us.

    —Dee Pennock, God’s Path to Sanity

  • In life we pass through stages. The heart, thoughts, feelings and spirit all pass through them. Each stage has its impact and effect. It has a duration of time beyond which it does not go.

    Happy is the one who looks continually with hope for the next stage. 

    Happy is the one whom difficulties do not send to the other extreme. For a difficulty is only a stage in life and the solution of that difficulty is yet another stage. 

    Live with faith that there will be a solution and rejoice as you look forward to what cannot be seen. 

    The world itself is only a stage in life that will arrive at another stage, that of eternity.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life

  • ”Only struggle a little more. Carry your cross without complaining. Don’t think you are anything special. Don’t justify your sins and weaknesses, but see yourself as you really are. And, especially, love one another.”

    —Fr. Seraphim Rose

  • If somebody refuses to do the will of God, let them suffer the consequences of their wrong choice. Let them suffer, but pray for them, and they will return back.

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

  • And he endured injustice and the harshness of the rich man, who walked in front of him day and night without paying him attention, not even giving him some food. And it is amazing that when the Lord told us the story of Lazarus, he did not mention any other virtue in the life of Lazarus, except this virtue, that he endured poverty, being in need, without grumbling or complaining.

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

  • 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

  • “Why did the Lord do this; why did the Lord do that?” Rather, place Christ between you and the tribulation, and then you will have joy and will be comforted. Do not place the tribulation between you and the Lord.

    Look to the reward.

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

  • The Island (2006)
    Pavel Lungin