Misery.—The only thing which consoles us for our miseries is diversion, and yet this is the greatest of our miseries. For it is this which principally hinders us from reflecting upon ourselves, and which makes us insensibly ruin ourselves. Without this we should be in a state of weariness, and this weariness would spur us to seek a more solid means of escaping from it. But diversion amuses us, and leads us unconsciously to death.
—Blaise Pascal, Pensées
Category: SUFFERING
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What is the appropriate attitude toward a patient who is incurably ill?
When the illness becomes incurable, speech no longer matters much. It is necessary to be able to keep silence, to be able to caress the suffering person affectionately so as to convey to him the closeness, warmth, and compassion of God. It is enough to take his hand and to look at each other without saying anything. The tenderness of a look can bring God’s consolation and comfort. In the presence of a suffering sick person, it is not necessary to speak. It is necessary to be compassionate silently, to love, and to pray, with the assurance that the only language that is appropriate for love is prayer and silence.
—Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise -
“If God suffers in the flesh when He is made man, should we not rejoice when we suffer, for we have God to share our sufferings? This shared suffering confers the kingdom on us. For he spoke truly who said, ‘If we suffer with Him, then we shall also be glorified with Him’ (Rom. 8:17).”
—St. Maximus the Confessor -
St. Barsanuphius recounts that his disciple, “Abba Seridos was gravely ill one day, afflicted with a high fever that would not subside. Nevertheless he did not ask God to heal him or even to lessen his suffering. He asked only that God would grant him endurance and a spirit of thanksgiving.”
—Jean-Claude Larchet, The Theology of Illness -
Illness often challenges our former, false equilibrium, and leads us to question the very foundations of our existence. It effectively weakens our impassioned attachments to this world. And in so doing, it reveals the vanity of those attachments and leads us to surpass their limits.
—Jean-Claude Larchet, The Theology of Illness -
St. Gregory of Nazianzus offers the following counsel to an ill acquaintance: “I don’t wish and I don’t consider it good that you, well instructed in divine things as you are, should suffer the same feelings as more worldly people, that you should allow your body to give in, that you should agonize over your suffering as if it were incurable and irredeemable. Rather, I should want you to be philosophical about your suffering and show yourself superior to the cause of your affliction, beholding in the illness a superior way towards what is ultimately good for you.”
To be philosophical about one’s illness and suffering means above all for a person to consider what they reveal to him about his condition.
—Jean-Claude Larchet, The Theology of Illness -
To consider illness strictly as a phenomenon unto itself is almost inevitably to see it in a negative, sterile light; and this only increases the physical suffering and moral pain which result from a sense of its absurdity. The consequence of such an attitude is generally to leave the way open to the activity of demons and to develop in the soul troubling passions, such as fear, anxiety, anger, weariness, revolt, and despair. These states not only do not relieve the body, they most often increase the symptoms of the evil that affects it, thereby creating sickness even in the soul. The illness then serves no good at all, but it becomes for the ill person a source of spiritual deterioration which puts his soul in jeopardy perhaps more than it does his body.
It is because of this very danger that the Fathers stress the point that “it is not in vain, nor without reason, that we are subject to illnesses.” This is why they encourage us to be vigilant when illness strikes, and not to trouble ourselves first of all with their natural causes and means to cure them. Rather, our first concern should be to discern their meaning within the framework of our relationship to God, and to throw light on the positive function they can have in furthering our salvation.
—Jean-Claude Larchet, The Theology of Illness -
What positive fruit can illness bring? Illness and the acceptance of our own mortality can decrease our attachment to a merely material basis for our being. We find that material wealth and worldly gains benefit us little. For many, we discover for the first time that our spiritual nature awakens and grows stronger as our physical strength diminishes and our bodies slowly accept their limitations.
—Matthew P. Binkewicz, Peaceful Journey: A Hospice Chaplain’s Guide to End of Life -
It is necessary to go from total selfishness to sacrificial love that is no longer focused at all on self, in the image of God’s own great love. This is the progress of the smallest creature toward the infinity of heaven…Such an evolution would normally take an extremely long time. But everything happens as though God were in a hurry. Therefore, we should not be surprised if this accelerated course is rather rough. Life is too short to complete such an important journey! If you look at it from the perspective of eternity, our life is only a brief instant. But that does not prevent us from feeling that it is long, especially if one is suffering. Let us keep this difference in mind; it will help us to understand. When we have gone over to God’s side, we will see things just as he does. Jesus explained this: A woman who is giving birth is in pain because her hour has come. But when the infant is born, she no longer remembers her suffering, because she is happy that a child is born into the world (John 16:21).
—Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise -
Let us remain humble when we speak about someone else’s suffering. Only the one who has truly suffered has the right to speak.
—Robert Sarah, The Power of Silence: Against the Dictatorship of Noise
SO GOOD QUOTES 