• What God Wills or Permits 

    I have heard many people say about everything that comes about: “It was God’s will”, whether the outcome was good or bad. Yet God wants only the best. As for the ills that happen on Earth , they happen against God’s beneficent will. God permits these things to happen because He has generously granted man free will, but God will judge him for it… So that is why the tyrant is free to oppress, the murderer to kill and the thief to steal. All these matters are opposed to God’s good will and He will judge the wrong-doers for them. There is, therefore, a big difference between what God wills and what God permits.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life

  • Do good and forget about it. Don’t seek any reward or praise for it. Don’t expect that the one to whom you have done a good turn will repay you in the same way or give you the same treatment. One thing is sure which is that you have not done good with some expectation of a reward! When you do good just because you love to do good and because you cannot help doing good, then you can be sure that you have done good. Let goodness be a character trait in you. Let it be something spontaneous, which requires no effort just like breathing. If you forget it, God will remind you, here and in eternity. But if you recall it, even if it is only inside you, then you might well lose it…

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life

  • Whoever writes should put in his mind before writing what consequences, effects and reactions are likely to result from it. A piece of writing is something for which one is responsible before, one’s conscience, before God and before its readers. Blessed is the person who writes with his conscience before his pen. And blessed is he whose writing can call forth nobility and not sharp arrows of animosity. No one ought to write and publish without considering the possible reactions to his work, or just to achieve some personal gain.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Experiences in Life

  • It’s easier to ask for money from the poor than from the wealthy.

    —Anton Chekhov

  • View situations with simplicity and let them take their natural course.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Monastic Treasures for All of Us

  • Among the items that waste time is for the mind to replay what it saw during the day. It finds audiovisual flashbacks of the entire past: discussions, images, actions, meetings, and conversations, as well as the mind’s consequent inferences— this consumes a great amount of time.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Monastic Treasures for All of Us

  • Properly Valuing the Whole World

    What is this whole world, with all its continents, its past, present, and future? What does it amount to? Nothing! I resonate with a statement from one scholar who once said: “When I was a child I saw myself in comparison to the world as a small speck of sand on an endless beach of an endless ocean.” So what if someone lives in any given city within a specific country, which is part of a specific continent, which in turn is a small part of planet Earth, itself just one of innumerable planets? What would that mean? It is nothing. What does this person turn out to be? He says: “When I was a child, I saw myself as a small speck of sand on an endless beach of an endless ocean, but now I know that I am the endless ocean and the whole world is a small speck of sand on my beach.” 

    What is this world?! One who sits to think of the world finds that it is frivolous. If you asked him, “What is the world?” he would say, “A small speck of sand on my beach.” And if you asked, “What is your endless beach?” he would reply, “This is the beach leading to eternity.” If you see yourself as the image and likeness of God, then what does this world amount to? With all its noise, struggles, desires, and status, what does the world amount to? Nothing. This is a person’s valuation of the world.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Monastic Treasures for All of Us

  • He does not search people’s intentions and inner purposes, which God alone knows.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, Fruits of the Spirit

  • Even all the incidents you experience are permitted by God so you can gain a spiritual benefit from them…

    There are those who become nervously, psychologically or mentally affected by incidents. Others are affected spiritually by whatever events they experience; everything that happens to them makes them closer to God….

    The people that you meet, are sent by God. Passing your way, they are for your own spiritual benefit, if you know how to benefit from them.

    The righteous present you with an example and a blessing, while you benefit endurance, patience, and forgiveness for others from evil.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, WORDS OF SPIRITUAL BENEFIT VOL. II

  • Truly God has many solutions… We think of our problems, using our human mind, which is limited. As for God He is unlimited in His knowledge and His wisdom. When matters become complicated, their complication is relative for us human beings. As for God nothing becomes complicated, everything is easy and the solutions are many. God interferes at the right time and in the suitable way. It could be a solution that never crossed our minds, one that we never thought of or expected…

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, WORDS OF SPIRITUAL BENEFIT VOL. II