Category: SUFFERING & TRIBULATION

“Troubles remind the wise man of God, but crush those who forget him.”

—St. Mark the Ascetic

Perhaps it’s good for one to suffer. Can an artist do anything if he’s happy? Would he ever want to do anything? What is art, after all, but a protest against the horrible inclemency of life?

—Aldous Huxley

I, as a healing presence, walk with other in their pain and in their joy. I don’t take on their suffering in a futile effort to make them feel better. It doesn’t work.

Empathy provides energy to others because it makes them aware that we understand their suffering and don’t judge, condemn, or try to fix their problems. Sympathy, by contrast, takes on the feelings and pain of others in an effort to identify with their plight. (Sympathy here is used in its current cultural context. Linguistically, sympathy can connote compassion, but it generally means non-compassion in today’s world.)

A person who is a healing presence to another person provides empathy in abundance without accepting or expressing sympathy. Sympathy for another person simply magnifies the problem. Sympathy is codependence and pride in disguise. If someone else is feeling depressed, it doesn’t do him or her any good if I become sympathetic and take on the depressed feelings. Other people need hope and strength, not another depressed person to pull them deeper into darkness.

—Albert S. Rossi, Becoming a Healing Presence

Now, all our peace in this miserable life is found in humbly enduring suffering rather than in being free from it. He who knows best how to suffer will enjoy the greater peace, because he is the conqueror of himself, the master of the world, a friend of Christ, and an heir of heaven.

—Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

If you know how to suffer in silence, you will undoubtedly experience God’s help.

—Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

When the grace of God comes to a man he can do all things, but when it leaves him he becomes poor and weak, abandoned, as it were, to affliction. Yet, in this condition he should not become dejected or despair. On the contrary, he should calmly await the will of God and bear whatever befalls him in praise of Jesus Christ, for after winter comes summer, after night, the day, and after the storm, a great calm.

—Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

If you carry the cross willingly, it will carry and lead you to the desired goal where indeed there shall be no more suffering, but here there shall be. If you carry it unwillingly, you create a burden for yourself and increase the load, though still you have to bear it. If you cast away one cross, you will find another and perhaps a heavier one. Do you expect to escape what no mortal man can ever avoid? Which of the saints was without a cross or trial on this earth? Not even Jesus Christ, our Lord, Whose every hour on earth knew the pain of His passion. “It behooveth Christ to suffer, and to rise again from the dead, … and so enter into his glory.” [Luke 24:46] How is it that you look for another way than this, the royal way of the holy cross?

The whole life of Christ was a cross and a martyrdom, and do you seek rest and enjoyment for yourself? You deceive yourself, you are mistaken if you seek anything but to suffer, for this mortal life is full of miseries and marked with crosses on all sides. Indeed, the more spiritual progress a person makes, so much heavier will he frequently find the cross, because as his love increases, the pain of his exile also increases.

—Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

Souls that have known pain and suffering and that are tormented by their passions win most especially the love and grace of God. It is souls such as these that become saints, and very often we pass judgment on them. Remember what Saint Paul says, ‘Where sin abounded, grace flowed even more abundantly’ (Romans 5:20). When you remember this, you will feel that these people are more worthy than you and than me. We see them as weak, but when they open themselves to God they become all love and all divine eros. Whereas previously they had acquired different habits, they now give all the power of their soul to Christ and are set on fire by Christ’s love. That is how God’s miracle works in such souls, which we regard as ‘lost’. We shouldn’t be discouraged, nor should we rush to conclusions, nor judge on the basis of superficial and external things.

—St. Porphyrios