Category: SUFFERING & TRIBULATION

  • He who accepts present afflictions in the expectation of future blessings has found knowledge of the truth; and he will easily be freed from anger and remorse.

    —St Mark the Ascetic

  • Mother Erene suffered from many illnesses, including cancer, heart disease, headaches, and diabetes, but her face always radiated with a smile. On bearing her cross: “Once, my pains were unbearable. I was praying to thank God. I beseeched Our Lady the Virgin to pray for me. Then I beheld her before me in light. She smiled and asked, ‘Do you remember when I asked you if you would like to be a martyr?’ I answered, ‘Yes, I do.’ She said, ‘I told you that pain, illnesses and tribulations are forms of martyrdom, so bear them.’ Therefore, I constantly thank God. I am happy with illness because I previously asked for that cross. Tribulations bring me closer to God and confer on me many spiritual benefits.

    source

  • I always offer consolation to those who suffer from wearisome problems by saying to them:

    “Problems always have a pyramid shape.

    They rise up till they reach their peak, then go down in the
    other direction.

    There isn’t a problem which continues to rise up and up for
    ever. Even the trial of the righteous Job himself reached its
    peak and then ended, and it was the same for the upright
    Joseph.

    All of their problems were limited to a time, after which they
    came to an end.

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

  • Do not look at a problem but look at God to solve it. Your feelings that God is standing with you in your difficulties will give you hope and strength.

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

  • Pain is stronger and deeper than joy and also more sincere. A person in pain stands before the reality of life and before the reality of himself and perceives that all the delights of the world are feeble and insignificant…

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

  • Tomorrow is Better for You

    Don’t live in your present day if it is too wearisome for you, but live for your tomorrow.

    In this tomorrow see the hand of God reaching out to you to calm you.

    And on the morrow you will see many solutions to your problems.

    If your today is dark, then your tomorrow will open before you windows of light.

    The Saints lived for their tomorrows, for their eternity, and hung all their hopes upon it.

    David lived for his tomorrow when Saul was pursuing him. And so did Jonah when he was in the belly of the fish…

    Joseph lived for his tomorrow when he was in prison and so did his father Jacob when he was fleeing from Esau, trusting that God would restore him from his exile…

    If things become problematic for you, say to yourself that they will be solved tomorrow.

    Then smile and live for that tomorrow…

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

  • It is very important for every Christian to realize that our sorrows are all sent in accordance with God’s will, which is always good and redemptive. In fact, most often they are sent not as punishments for our sins but to set aright our path and our hearts or as the answer to a request we have made of God. People often expect God to give them what they have asked for in their prayers in the way that they themselves think is best. But God often answers their supplications in a way that is entirely different from what they would have wanted or imagined.

    They might ask, for example, for God to grant them humility, imagining that slowly, day by day, it will grow in their heart through the beneficent influence of God. But the Lord often does things differently: He will send them an unexpected, harsh blow that wounds their pride and egotism and humbles them. The Lord will often send us an illness and we complain and don’t think that most often this is a great blessing from God. It may be God’s answer to prayers in which we have asked Him to strengthen our faith.

    We have to accept all the trials and sorrows that God sends us with great humility and without the slightest complaint, in the humble conviction that, through them, God is guiding us, rather than that His wrath has come upon us. There is no wrath in God. “God is love”. And perfect love is a stranger to any form of injustice’.

    —St. Luke the Surgeon

  • “Ordinarily we experience no pain when the soul is sick, yet on the contrary when the body is troubled we use every means possible to relieve that trouble. For this very reason God afflicts the body because of the sins of the soul, in order to restore health to man’s most noble aspect by making use of the least noble affliction.”

    —St. John Chrysostom

    via The Theology of Illness by Jean-Claude Larchet 

  • “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

  • A lot of the suffering that comes from our experience arises because we can’t help but compare it to another moment in time. In my own case, it was because I was arbitrarily using the marker of a year to make judgments about how I should’ve been feeling.

    I felt that this year should be as good as or better than last year. Not only is it pointless to make the comparison, but it’s impossible to do so accurately. When we’re told to be present and not focus too heavily on the past or the future, it’s not only practical advice, it’s rational advice; our ideas about time are incredibly skewed and often dictated in large part by our emotional state in that moment.

    What It Means to Live Life with Open Palms and How This Sets Us Free
    Benjamin Fishel