Category: SUFFERING & TRIBULATION

  • Anyone who is sick should seek the prayer of others, that they may be restored to health; that through the intercession of others the enfeebled form of the body and the wavering footsteps of our deeds may be restored to health….Learn, you who are sick, to gain health through prayer. Seek the prayer of others, call upon the Church to pray for you, and God, in His regard for the Church, will give what He might refuse to you.

    —St. Ambrose

  • The best form of mortification is to accept with all our heart, in spite of our repugnance, all that God sends or permits, good and evil, joy and suffering…I find absolute submission to God’s will a sovereign remedy in every trouble, and when I consider that in reality God’s will is God Himself, I see that this submission is but the supreme adoration due to God, due to Him in whatever manner He may manifest Himself.

    —C. Marmion

  • Woe to our times: we now depart from the narrow and sorrowful path leading to eternal life and we seek a happy and peaceful path. But the merciful Lord leads many people from this path, against their will, and places them on the sorrowful one. Through unwanted sorrows and illnesses we draw closer to the Lord, for they humble us by constraint, and humility, when we acquire it, can save us even without works, according to St. Isaac the Syrian.

    —St. Macarius of Optina

  • He who opposes unpleasant events opposes the command of God unwittingly. But when someone accepts them with real knowledge, he ‘waits patiently for the Lord’ (Ps. 27:14).

    —St. Mark the Ascetic
    Philokalia, Vol. 1 p.142

  • “To see someone suffering who is nonetheless joyful, peaceful, and grateful to God is a divine encounter leading us to faith. And if its possible to “catch” faith from others, it is likewise our mission to “throw” faith in the direction of others through the power of our own union with Jesus.”

    All That I Have Is Yours: 100 Meditations with St. Pope Kyrillos VI on the Spiritual Life
    Fr. Kyrillos Ibrahim

  • “At times, our lives will be turned upside down with nothing to support us but our decision to keep in the goodness and faithfulness of God. Even many of the great saints were left without answers to their cries. St. Antony the Great questioned God about all the injustices of the world and Gods reply to him was, ‘Antony, keep your attention on yourself; these things are according to the judgment of God, and it is not to your advantage to know anything about them.””

    All That I Have Is Yours: 100 Meditations with St. Pope Kyrillos VI on the Spiritual Life
    Fr. Kyrillos Ibrahim

  • God does rescue the holy from affliction, but he does so not by rendering them untested but by blessing them with endurance. For if “affliction brings about endurance, then endurance brings about unapproved character.” Whoever rejects affliction deprives himself of approval. Just as none is crowned who has no rival, so none can be pronounced worthy except through tribulations.

    —St. Basil the Great

  • “Reality is irrelevant; Perception is everything.”

    —Terry Goodkind

  • The Value of Adversity

    It is good for us to have trials and troubles at times, for
    they often remind us that we are on probation and ought not to hope in any worldly thing. It is good for us sometimes to suffer contradiction, to be misjudged by men even though we do well and mean well. These things help us to be humble and shield us from vainglory. When to all outward appearances men give us no credit, when they do not think
    well of us, then we are more inclined to seek God Who sees
    our hearts. Therefore, a man ought to root himself so firmly
    in God that he will not need the consolations of men.

    When a man of good will is afflicted, tempted, and
    tormented by evil thoughts, he realizes clearly that his
    greatest need is God, without Whom he can do no good.
    Saddened by his miseries and sufferings, he laments and
    prays. He wearies of living longer and wishes for death that
    he might be dissolved and be with Christ. Then he understands fully that perfect security and complete peace cannot be found on earth.

    —Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

  • “Therein lies a crucial distinction between Christian hope and optimism. Whereas optimism tries to minimize the darkness, to see the glass half-full rather than half empty, hope folly acknowledges the darkness and the evil, but rests in Gods presence and His faithful promises. In fact—and this is certainly the witness of many saints—it is precisely in those times of darkness that we can become aware of God’s presence as a burst of Divine Light overwhelming us with a heavenly joy that surpasses any earthly peace or happiness we seek.”

    All That I Have Is Yours: 100 Meditations with St. Pope Kyrillos VI on the Spiritual Life
    Fr. Kyrillos Ibrahim