If you carry the cross willingly, it will carry and lead you to the desired goal where indeed there shall be no more suffering, but here there shall be. If you carry it unwillingly, you create a burden for yourself and increase the load, though still you have to bear it. If you cast away one cross, you will find another and perhaps a heavier one. Do you expect to escape what no mortal man can ever avoid? Which of the saints was without a cross or trial on this earth? Not even Jesus Christ, our Lord, Whose every hour on earth knew the pain of His passion. “It behooveth Christ to suffer, and to rise again from the dead, … and so enter into his glory.” [Luke 24:46] How is it that you look for another way than this, the royal way of the holy cross?
The whole life of Christ was a cross and a martyrdom, and do you seek rest and enjoyment for yourself? You deceive yourself, you are mistaken if you seek anything but to suffer, for this mortal life is full of miseries and marked with crosses on all sides. Indeed, the more spiritual progress a person makes, so much heavier will he frequently find the cross, because as his love increases, the pain of his exile also increases.
—Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ
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Souls that have known pain and suffering and that are tormented by their passions win most especially the love and grace of God. It is souls such as these that become saints, and very often we pass judgment on them. Remember what Saint Paul says, ‘Where sin abounded, grace flowed even more abundantly’ (Romans 5:20). When you remember this, you will feel that these people are more worthy than you and than me. We see them as weak, but when they open themselves to God they become all love and all divine eros. Whereas previously they had acquired different habits, they now give all the power of their soul to Christ and are set on fire by Christ’s love. That is how God’s miracle works in such souls, which we regard as ‘lost’. We shouldn’t be discouraged, nor should we rush to conclusions, nor judge on the basis of superficial and external things.
—St. Porphyrios -
There are some who, if they meet with any reverse, or are slandered by any one, or if they fall into any bodily malady, any pain in the foot or head, or any other disease, immediately blaspheme. In this way they endure the affliction, but are deprived of the benefit.
—St. John Chrysostom, On Wealth and Poverty -
She also said, ‘As long as we are in the monastery, obedience is preferable to asceticism. The one teaches pride, the other humility.’
Sayings of Amma Syncletica -
If you want to change and eliminate the problems which you have encountered because of your upbringing, enter into a loving relationship with God and others [in your life], and these problems will be resolved. When I learn how to love God, and train myself to love my brother, I will change and become conformed to the image of His Son.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality
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If you are suffering from a trial, which you are going through because of [your] upbringing and education, and if you endure this suffering with your true self and you expose it to the light of the grace of Christ, then Scripture says to you, “That you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”(James 1:4) The following will take place: your true self will grow and become complete and lacking nothing, through this suffering.
As for the grumbling soul, which is not joyful, but is always complaining about its upbringing in such a home, it will neither grow nor be healed.
—H.E. Metropolitan Youssef, How to Develop Your Personality
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People look at their homes as a place to complain about and to reject, and unfortunately, in the recent days, the culture that we live in encourages more of that. But My home is a place for me to be holy, to be saintly. And if I don’t realize this, I will be lost. I’ll be truly confused. I’m not living with my family so one day I could go to another family—that’s my goal. That’s terrible, as if almost I’m not able to embrace and enjoy the life I’m living. Same thing when I’m married, same thing with my spouse, my house—I have to look at this place—this is the place of my holiness, this is the place of my purity, the place of my charity, the place of my discipline, the place of my obedience. Where else can I pray and practice real virtue, unless I am with the people that I love the most.
—Fr. Mina Dimitri -
58. Any circumstance in which a man finds himself unwillingly is a prison and a punishment for him. So be content with whatever circumstances you may now be in, lest by being ungrateful you punish yourself unwittingly. This contentment can be achieved in but one way: through detachment from worldly things.
St. Anthony the Great: On the Character of Men and on the Virtuous Life: One Hundred and Seventy Texts
Philokalia -
Being a human means accepting promises from other people and trusting that other people will be good to you. When that is too much to bear, it is always possible to retreat into the thought, “I’ll live for my own comfort, for my own revenge, for my own anger, and I just won’t be a member of society anymore.” That really means, “I won’t be a human being anymore.”
You see people doing that today where they feel that society has let them down, and they can’t ask anything of it, and they can’t put their hopes on anything outside themselves. You see them actually retreating to a life in which they think only of their own satisfaction, and maybe the satisfaction of their revenge against society. But the life that no longer trusts another human being and no longer forms ties to the political community is not a human life any longer.
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum on How to Live with Our Human Fragility
SO GOOD QUOTES 