Category: SUFFERING & TRIBULATION

  • …God never abandons us; we are the ones who forget and abandon Him. When man does not live spiritually, he is no entitled to divine help. But when he does live spiritually and is near God, he is entitled to it.

    …We sit for hours on end in vain, trying by ourselves to find solution to a problem, using all of our inexperience. Our head spins, our eyes burn, sleep escapes us, because the little demon has hooked us with obsessive thoughts. We may finally find a solution, but later God will found for us a better solution, which we had not thought of, leaving us with the headaches and the sleepless nights. No matter how right our thought might be, if God is not foremost, the head will tire and ache, while prayer with trust in God brings restfulness. For this reason, we can leave to God those activities which are difficult to achieve by human means and not be dependent upon our human efforts, reassured that God will do what is best.

    —Saint Paisios the Athonite

  • It’s not my job to fix his problems. It’s my job to be there for him with love as he figures out how to handle his own suffering.

    —Malia Bradshaw, How to Be There for Others Without Taking on Their Pain

  • “You never get over it. But you get to where it doesn’t bother you so much.”

    —Jeffrey Eugenides,The Virgin Suicides

  • Why do men learn through pain and suffering, and not through pleasure and happiness? Very simply, because pleasure and happiness accustom one to satisfaction with the things given in this world, whereas pain and suffering drive one to seek a more profound happiness beyond the limitations of this world. I am at this moment in some pain, and I call on the Name of Jesus—not necessarily to relieve the pain, but that Jesus, in Whom alone we may transcend this world, may be with me during it, and His will be done in me. But in pleasure I do not call on Him; I am content then with what I have, and I think I need no more. And why is a philosophy of pleasure untenable?—because pleasure is impermanent and unreliable, and pain is inevitable. In pain and suffering Christ speaks to us, and thus God is kind to give them to us, yes, and evil too—for in all of these we glimpse something of what must lie beyond, if there really exists what our hearts most deeply desire.

    —Fr. Seraphim Rose

  • If we have a burden beyond our bearing, we must turn to the Lord immediately — like this: ‘O Lord, I cannot even bear my own infirmities, yet now I must bear the burden of so-and-so. I cannot cope with all this responsibility. I cannot do this myself, and – because I feel I have no desire to cope either – all this weighs even more heavily on my conscience. I wish to help my fellow man, but I don’t have the means. My neighbors think that I don’t want to help, and that is an additional burden to me.

    —Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica

  • People are divided in this world into good and evil, rich and poor, educated and uneducated, noble and ignoble, intelligent and fools. They do however all have one thing in common. And that is pain. Because all people, without exception, will experience pain during their lifetime. As the saying goes: ‘It’s a marvel, if someone finds happiness during their life’. Therefore, we all live in the realm of pain. We know that pain is something personal, which one has to deal with alone. It’s our cross, which we have a duty to carry, just as the Saviour of the world, Jesus, carried His Cross for our sakes. So find comfort and rest in the paternal hand, which at this time is operating on you with the instrument of pain, and be calm. Accept that it is God who sends it, make peace with it, with pain, so as to be able to deal with it.

    I know how difficult that is, but at the same time it’s for your salvation. The saints rejoiced in their sorrows; we ought to at least accept them with patience, and God won’t forget, even this small, voluntary display of patience on our part towards His will, which is what pain represents.

    When in pain, muster your spiritual strength, and try to comprehend the purpose of pain, through which God opens the Heavens for you. Do you for a moment think that He who measures the number of hairs on your head isn’t aware of the extent of your pain? He is. So, rest trustingly in our heavenly Father. Don’t not give up. With Christ, you’ll get through everything. Because you’ll become His heir and you’ll inherit the infinite riches of our common Father and God. Amen.

    —Elder Ephraim of Arizona

  • CHAPTER IX: Of another sort of dejection which produces despair of salvation.

    THERE is, too, another still more objectionable sort of dejection, which produces in the guilty soul no amendment of life or correction of faults, but the most destructive despair: which did not make Cain repent after the murder of his brother, or Judas, after the betrayal, hasten to relieve himself by making amends, but drove him to hang himself in despair.

    —St. John Cassian, Institutes

  • Life is random as it is deliberate, funny as it is tragic.

    — W.F. Gerald (Character) from The Only Living Boy in New York (2017)

  • And if there’s one thing individuals considering suicide are short on, it’s patience—because of their willfulness. They’re like passengers aboard a transcontinental airplane flight who, halfway there, decide they can’t wait any longer to land, and want to jump out. Life is like that. It’s not finished yet, You don’t know the conclusion. The part of suicidal thinking that’s not so intelligent is deciding to judge life before you’ve let God in to heal it and make it meaningful.

    —Dee Pennock, God’s Path to Sanity