Category: SUFFERING & TRIBULATION

  • “If we only could realize that there is no evil in a person that is not at the same time a suffering in this person.”

    — Met. Anthony Bloom

  • Though you may be dead for a little while, He will raise you to life again.

    —St. Augustine

  • There are virtues of the body and virtues of the soul. Those of the body include fasting, vigils, sleeping on the ground, ministering to people’s needs, working with one’s hands so as not to be a burden or in order to give to others (cf. 1 Thess. 2:9, Ephes. 4:28). Those of the soul include love, long-suffering, gentleness, self-control, and prayer (cf. Gal, 5:22). If as a result of some constraint or bodily condition, such as illness or the like, we find we cannot practice the bodily virtues mentioned above, we are forgiven by the Lord because He knows the reasons. But if we fail to practice the virtues of the soul, we shall not have a single excuse, for it is always within our power to practice them.

    —St Maximos the Confessor, Four Hundred Texts on Love

  • The sicker the man, the more bitter the medicine that the doctor prescribes for him. At times, even, it seems to a sick man that the medicine is worse and more bitter than the sickness itself!

    —St. Nikolai Velimirovich

    For it is absurd to be grateful to doctors who give us bitter and unpleasant medicines to cure our bodies, and yet to be ungrateful to God for what appears to us to be harsh, not grasping that all we encounter is for our benefit and in accordance with His providence.

    —St. Anthony the Great

  • “It is alarming to consider how many major life decisions we take primarily in order to minimize present-moment emotional discomfort.”

    ―Oliver Burkeman, The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking

  • God has not forgotten the man to whom He sends suffering and trials, but in this way is proving His closeness to him.

    —St. John Chrysostom

  • If God wants us to suffer, there’ll be some saving purpose behind it, which we mortals can’t foresee. But patience, forbearance and humility in the face of temptation will always, yes always, bring certain benefit.

    —Elder Ephraim of Arizona

  • “I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers

    flow in the right direction, will the earth turn

    as it was taught, and if not how shall

    I correct it?

    Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,

    can I do better?

    Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows

    can do it and I am, well,

    hopeless.

    Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,

    am I going to get rheumatism,

    lockjaw, dementia?

    Finally, I saw that worrying had come to nothing.

    And gave it up. And took my old body

    and went out into the morning,

    and sang.”

    —Mary Oliver

  • When Dr. Payson was asked by a friend, in a season of severe illness, if he could see any particular reason for the present dispensation, he replied- “No; but I am as well satisfied as if I could see ten thousand. God’s will is the very perfection of all reason.”

    … 

    in suffering and weakness, you are brought to “Lie passive in His hands, And know no will but His!”

    …

    The discipline of patience is another light blending with the shadows of sickness. No unimportant or untimely grace of the Spirit is this; the development and culture of which finds no school more appropriate, or discipline more effectual, than that of ‘pining sickness.’

    The continuous endurance of unmitigated pain- the prolonged and deathly weakness- the failure of skill and remedies to promote a cure- the morbid irritability and fretting almost inseparable from the prolongation of suffering- and the remembrance of duties neglected, of affairs deranged, of expenses incurred- all conspire to render the discipline of patience the most needed and precious; and when attained, to shed one of the most luminous graces of the Spirit upon the shaded picture of bodily disease.

    Lights and Shadows of Spiritual Life
    Octavius Winslow

  • When times are good for us, we can come up with all sorts of arguments to explain away the pain of others and the existential angst we occasionally experience in our wealth and privilege. But when times are bad, all logic and arguments fail. Then what we think we believe is stripped down to what we actually believe.

    …

    it is possible (probable) that very godly, intelligent and well-meaning people will disagree. Let’s not let self righteousness—and her children, fear, anger, and judgement—keep us from loving one another and believing the best of one another, even if we don’t see eye to eye on this or any other political or medical matter.

    Strong feelings quickly become passions. Let us not lose this opportunity to love our neighbour, especially the neighbour who doesn’t see things the right way (i.e. the way I see them).

    —Fr. Michael Gillis
    Love and Self Righteousness