Category: SUFFERING & TRIBULATION

  • A man runs endlessly to God and demands, requires benefits: happiness, contentment, health. He runs up to God with his need, but does not live by Him, and every time he receives what he is asking for, he returns to his usual former sinful life. And this barren crush of a man near God more and more often causes in leper souls grumbling at his Creator, grumbling at everything. Then God becomes guilty of everything: it is He who does not respond to requests, requirements, this He does not give a person the fullness of life’s happiness. But the fact that man himself does not live according to the instructions of God and in the law of God, that he reaps the bitterness of a life destroyed by his own iniquities, does not come to his mind.

    He does not have a true faith, a true life of spirit, and his life path will not end in salvation. That’s all! How clear and simple!

    —Archimandrite John Krestiankin

  • She understood that the hardest times in life to go through were when you were transitioning from one version of yourself to another.
     
    —Sarah Addison Allen, Lost Lake

  • “You do not know what is good for you: health or sickness.”  

    —St. Basil the Great

  • After he witnessed the torments she went through, the elder sighed and wondered how it was possible for a young woman to withstand so much suffering. Her response was: “Father, for the kingdom of heaven, that was nothing. Had I known at the time what awaited me in God I would have tolerated infinitely more.”

    Orthodox Afterlife
    John Habib

  • Although it may be difficult to accept the concept of finding fortune in suffering, after death we will know and even wish we could have endured more hardship because of the glory we would have received in Paradise.

    Orthodox Afterlife
    John Habib

  • St. Mary herself visited her and addressed Mother Erene’s prayer for martyrdom, telling her, “Indeed, whatever you put up with—be it pains, diseases, problems, anguish or stress—is martyrdom.”

    Orthodox Afterlife
    John Habib

  • It appears that a person can receive glory in heaven by enduring suffering on earth, even if that suffering seems to have nothing to do with Christ, such as sickness.

    Orthodox Afterlife
    John Habib

  • Often we are greatly exaggerated with our sorrows, we observe every sorrow, but we do not observe the graces we receive from the Lord, believing it to be a given thing and therefore remain ungrateful to the Lord.

    And only when our sorrows visit us do we begin to properly appreciate the happy moment when the sorrows were not there, and we promise that if the sorrows pass, we will be grateful to God for a peaceful, tranquil existence and gratitude.

    —Archimandrite Kirill (Pavlov)

  • Perhaps suffering is just as great a benefit to him as well-being?

    Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  • Even sometimes there is happiness in the midst of sorrow; and indeed sorrow is everywhere.

    Notes from the Underground
    Fyodor Dostoyevsky