Category: SUFFERING & TRIBULATION

  • He does not always immediately answer our prayers. Sometimes he does not answer them at all, but instead, in His wisdom and goodness, grants us something that we did not ask for, but which in our situation is more beneficial for the salvation of our souls.

    —Metropolitan Gregory (Postnikov) of St. Petersburg
    How to Live a Holy Life p.108

  • In the present life, until one’s final breath, sadness always comes mixed with joy.

    —Elder Joseph the Hesychast

  • We must learn to live each day, each hour, yes, each minute as a new beginning, as a unique opportunity to make everything new. Imagine that we could live each moment as a moment pregnant with new life. Imagine that we could live each day as a day full of promises. Imagine that we could walk through the new year always listening to the voice saying to us: “I have a gift for you and can’t wait for you to see it!” Imagine.

    Is it possible that our imagination can lead us to the truth of our lives? Yes, it can! The problem is that we allow our past, which becomes longer and longer each year, to say to us: “You know it all; you have seen it all, be realistic; the future will just be a repeat of the past. Try to survive it as best you can.” There are many cunning foxes jumping on our shoulders and whispering in our ears the great lie: “There is nothing new under the sun… don’t let yourself be fooled.”

    When we listen to these foxes, they eventually prove themselves right: our new year, our new day, our new hour become flat, boring, dull, and without anything new.

    So what are we to do? First, we must send the foxes back to where they belong: in their foxholes. And then we must open our minds and our hearts to the voice that resounds through the valleys and hills of our life saying: “Let me show you where I live among my people. My name is ‘God-with-you.’ I will wipe all the tears from your eyes; there will be no more death, and no more mourning or sadness. The world of the past has gone” (Revelation 21:2–5).

    —Henri Nouwen

  • Our Good Lord has made man’s life very sweet (in its proper sense – the spiritual one) but some of us turn it into hell with our miseries, by not having discarded the secular mentality so that we can confront matters spiritually. That is how we strive to “sweeten” our life (in the wrong sense) and we never want to die; instead, the more the years pass by, the more the “oh’s” of our agony increase, filling our soul with stress.

    In other words, some of us poor wretches reach such a point, that we actually strive to retain the soul inside our 100-year-old, exhausted, intravenously-supported flesh and insist that “life is sweet” while we tremble lest we die. Whereas, for one who is dead from a secular aspect but resurrected spiritually, there is absolutely no agony, fear and stress – ever – because he even awaits death joyously, knowing he will be going to Christ and will be rejoicing for living once again, as he will be living near Christ and feeling a part of the joy of Paradise while still on earth and even asking himself if there is a greater joy in Paradise than the one he is feeling here on earth.

    —St Paisios

  • “Temptations come so that hidden passions may be revealed and so that it will be possible to fight them, and so that the soul may be rid of them. They are also a sign of God’s mercy. So give yourself with trust into God’s hands and ask his help, so that he will strengthen you in your struggle. God knows how much each one can bear and allows temptations according to the measure of our strength. Remember that after temptation comes spiritual joy, and that the Lord protects them that endure temptations and suffering for the sake of His love.” 

    —Saint Nektarios of Aegina

  • Making excuses is not written in the Scriptures. The Saints not only did not justify themselves, but they suffered willingly on behalf of others.

    —Saint Ephraim of Katounakia

  • “The person that’s rejecting you is the one with the issue—the one who needs you.”

    —Edward Rizgallah

  • “There is an equality between feeling joy with self-control and suffering pain with self-control.”

    —Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

  • And if you feel like you don’t do very much, and you feel like there’s no way God loves you. There are some people, they’re shocked, when I hear the struggles that they have in their life, the crosses that they bear, and I tell them, “If you only knew…” like they’re waiting for me to tell them that their problem is going to go away, and I tell them “No, your crown is going to be glorious in heaven.” And you say “I’m just a normal person, Abouna, I don’t do what all these other people do, I don’t do all these great things.” You’re comparing yourself to others.

    —Fr. Paul Girguis

  • Let all carnal sweetness be as bitterness to you; carnal loss, as gain.

    —St. John of Kronstadt, My Life in Christ