SO GOOD QUOTES

  • “Suffering passes. . . to suffer well lasts an eternity”

    —St. Thérèse of Lisieux

  • Anyone who is sick should seek the prayer of others, that they may be restored to health; that through the intercession of others the enfeebled form of the body and the wavering footsteps of our deeds may be restored to health….Learn, you who are sick, to gain health through prayer. Seek the prayer of others, call upon the Church to pray for you, and God, in His regard for the Church, will give what He might refuse to you.

    —St. Ambrose

  • The best form of mortification is to accept with all our heart, in spite of our repugnance, all that God sends or permits, good and evil, joy and suffering…I find absolute submission to God’s will a sovereign remedy in every trouble, and when I consider that in reality God’s will is God Himself, I see that this submission is but the supreme adoration due to God, due to Him in whatever manner He may manifest Himself.

    —C. Marmion

  • Woe to our times: we now depart from the narrow and sorrowful path leading to eternal life and we seek a happy and peaceful path. But the merciful Lord leads many people from this path, against their will, and places them on the sorrowful one. Through unwanted sorrows and illnesses we draw closer to the Lord, for they humble us by constraint, and humility, when we acquire it, can save us even without works, according to St. Isaac the Syrian.

    —St. Macarius of Optina

  • He who opposes unpleasant events opposes the command of God unwittingly. But when someone accepts them with real knowledge, he ‘waits patiently for the Lord’ (Ps. 27:14).

    —St. Mark the Ascetic
    Philokalia, Vol. 1 p.142

  • “To see someone suffering who is nonetheless joyful, peaceful, and grateful to God is a divine encounter leading us to faith. And if its possible to “catch” faith from others, it is likewise our mission to “throw” faith in the direction of others through the power of our own union with Jesus.”

    All That I Have Is Yours: 100 Meditations with St. Pope Kyrillos VI on the Spiritual Life
    Fr. Kyrillos Ibrahim

  • “At times, our lives will be turned upside down with nothing to support us but our decision to keep in the goodness and faithfulness of God. Even many of the great saints were left without answers to their cries. St. Antony the Great questioned God about all the injustices of the world and Gods reply to him was, ‘Antony, keep your attention on yourself; these things are according to the judgment of God, and it is not to your advantage to know anything about them.””

    All That I Have Is Yours: 100 Meditations with St. Pope Kyrillos VI on the Spiritual Life
    Fr. Kyrillos Ibrahim

  • God does rescue the holy from affliction, but he does so not by rendering them untested but by blessing them with endurance. For if “affliction brings about endurance, then endurance brings about unapproved character.” Whoever rejects affliction deprives himself of approval. Just as none is crowned who has no rival, so none can be pronounced worthy except through tribulations.

    —St. Basil the Great

  • “Reality is irrelevant; Perception is everything.”

    —Terry Goodkind

  • Or perhaps God wants to give you a period of rest
    from the burden of sin, so that your soul is not swallowed
    up by despair.

    Since the continual succession of falls, drags the sinner to
    despair. That is why God’s mercies reach out to him, giving him rest, even if it is for a short while, and lifts the war from him. Grace protects and supports him, even if it is for some time. So he passes through a period of calmness, in which sin does not trouble him. Not because he has been purified, but because he is not fighting.

    —H.H. Pope Shenouda III, The Life of Repentance and Purity