Category: SUFFERING & TRIBULATION

  • Almost without exception the most beautiful, selfless people I’ve met are ones who’ve experienced personal tragedy.

    —Donald Miller, Scary Close: Dropping the Act and Finding True Intimacy

  • “The natural property of the lemon tree is such that it lifts its branches upwards when it has no fruit, but the more the branches bend down the more fruit they bear. Those who have the mind to understand will grasp the meaning of this.”

    —St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

  • “Those who have been humbled by their passions may take courage. For even if they fall into every pit and are trapped in all the snares and suffer all maladies, yet after their restoration to health they become physicians, beacons, lamps, and pilots for all, teaching us the habits of every disease and from their own personal experience able to prevent their neighbours from falling.”

    —St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

  • If, desirous of bringing them to self-knowledge and of leading them to the right path of perfection, God sends them afflictions and sickness, or allows them to be persecuted, by which means He habitually tests His true and real servants, this test immediately shows what is hidden in their hearts, and how deeply they are corrupted by pride. For whatever affliction may visit them, they refuse to bend their necks to the yoke of God’s will and to trust in His righteous and secret judgments. They do not want to follow the example of our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Who humbled Himself and suffered for our sakes, and they refuse to be humble, to consider themselves the lowest of all creatures, and to regard their persecutors as their good friends, the tools of the divine bounty shown to them and helpers in their salvation.

    —Lorenzo Scupoli, Unseen Warfare

  • The prophet Jeremiah says that our waiting on God should be characterized by hope and quietness:

    “The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, to the soul who seeks Him.  It is good that one should hope and wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” (Lamentations 3:25-26)

    How are you waiting? Patiently or impatiently? Quietly or complainingly? With hope or with despair? It might just be that HOW you’re waiting will impact HOW LONG you’re waiting as well.

    —Fr. Antony Paul

  • “Just as a man with fever has no right to commit suicide, so till our very last breath we must never give up hope.”

    —St. John Climacus, The Ladder of Divine Ascent

  • “No matter how much the waves of temptation rise up against your soul, always hasten to Christ. The Saviour will always come to your aid and will calm the waves. Believe that the Lord has providentially arranged such experiences for your soul’s healing and do not reject them, seeking bodily peace and imaginary tranquility, for it is better to be shaken and yet to endure. If you will gain an insight from this, it will greatly lighten your struggle and you will gain more peace than if you do not.”

    —St. Leo of Optina

  • “Suffering is what your mind does with your pain. A silent mind knows no suffering.”

    —Elizabeth, Into the Silent Land: A Guide to the Christian Practice of Contemplation

  • “Everyone is hurting. I assume no evil.”

    —Jane Hwangbo

  • As long as we are occupied and preoccupied with our desire to do good but are not able to feel the crying need of those who suffer, our help remains hanging somewhere between our minds and our hands and does not descend into the heart where we can care.

    —Henri Nouwen,Out of Solitude: Three Meditations on the Christian Life