A Word of Consolation to Grieving Monks

“My child”, Scripture says, “if you come to serve the Lord God, prepare your soul for temptation: set your heart aright, and endure patiently… Accept all that is brought upon you, and in the changing of your condition be long-suffering” (Sir. 2:1–2, 4).

Sorrows have been from the beginning of the age the sign of God’s election. They were the sign of pleasing God for the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, martyrs, and monastics. All the saints walked the narrow path of temptations and sorrows, and by enduring them offered themselves as an acceptable sacrifice to God.

Even now holy souls are permitted, by the will of God, to undergo various tribulations, so that their love for God may be revealed in all its clarity.

Nothing happens to a person without the consent and permission of God.

A Christian who wishes to be a follower of our Lord Jesus Christ and to become by grace a son of God, born of the Spirit, must above all establish for himself as a rule and count as an inescapable obligation the patient endurance of all sorrows: bodily sufferings, insults from people, assaults from demons, and even the uprising of his own passions.

A Christian who wishes to please God is in need above all else of patience and firm hope in God. He must hold this weapon unceasingly in the right hand of his mind: for our wicked enemy, the devil, employs on his part every means to cast us into despondency during sorrows and to rob us of our hope in the Lord.

God never permits temptation to come upon His true servants beyond their strength. “God is faithful”, says the holy Apostle Paul, “who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but will also with the temptation provide the way of escape” (deliverance), “so that you may be able to bear it” (1 Cor. 10:13).

The devil, being a creature and servant of God, afflicts the soul not as much as he wishes, but only as much as God permits.

If men know well enough what burden various pack animals can carry, how much more does the infinite Wisdom of God know what measure of temptation is fitting for each soul.

A potter knows how long clay vessels must remain in the fire—for if they are kept too long they crack, and if too short they are unfit for use. How much more does God know what intensity and degree of the fire of temptations is needed for the rational vessels of God—Christians—so that they may become capable of inheriting the Kingdom of Heaven.

A child is incapable of performing the duties of life in the world: he is incapable of managing a household, of tilling the earth, and of other worldly occupations. So too souls, when they are already partakers of Divine grace but have not been tried by sorrows sent from evil spirits and have not been tested by these sorrows, remain still in infancy and are, as it were, incapable of the Kingdom of Heaven.

“If you are without chastening”, says the Apostle, “of which all have become partakers: then you are illegitimate and not sons” (Heb. 12:8).

Temptations and sorrows are sent down to a person for his benefit: the soul formed by them becomes strong and honorable before its Lord. If it endures all things to the end in hope in God, it cannot be deprived of the good things promised by the Holy Spirit and of complete liberation from the passions.

Souls that are given over to various sorrows—whether open sorrows inflicted by people, or hidden sorrows from the arising of impure thoughts in the mind, or bodily illnesses—if they endure all of these to the end, are accounted worthy of the same crowns as martyrs and of the same boldness before God as theirs.

Martyrs endured tribulations from men. They willingly delivered themselves to torments and manifested courageous patience even to death. The more varied and heavy their ascetic effort was, the greater the glory they gained and the greater the boldness they received before God. Monks endure tribulations from evil spirits. The greater the tribulations the devil inflicts on them, the greater the glory they will receive in the age to come from God, the greater the consolation they will be granted by the Holy Spirit here, during their earthly sojourn, amid their very sufferings.

The path that leads to eternal life is narrow and sorrowful; few walk upon it; but it is the inalienable and inescapable inheritance of all who are being saved. We must not turn aside from it! Every temptation brought upon us by the devil, let us endure with firmness and constancy, looking with the eye of faith toward the reward prepared in heaven.

Whatever sorrows we may suffer during earthly life, they can in no way be compared with the blessings promised us in eternity, or with the consolation which the Holy Spirit grants even here, or with deliverance from the dominion of the passions, or with the forgiveness of our many debts—with these inevitable fruits of patient and grateful endurance of sorrows.

“The sufferings of this present time are not worthy”—that is, our present temporal sufferings count for nothing, says the Apostle—“to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us”, that is, compared with the glory that will be revealed in us at our renewal by the Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:18).

Let us courageously endure all things for the sake of the Lord, as brave soldiers who do not shrink even from death for their King.

Why did we not suffer such and so great afflictions when we served the world and worldly cares? Why do we now, having come to serve God, suffer manifold calamities? Know this: sorrows rain down upon us like arrows on account of Christ. Our enemy, the devil, fires them at us to avenge against us the eternal blessings we hope and strive to obtain, and together with that—to weaken our souls with grief, despondency, and sloth, and thereby deprive us of the blessedness we await.

Christ invisibly fights for us. This mighty and invincible Defender of ours destroys all the snares and schemes of our enemy.

He Himself, He Himself—our Lord and Saviour—walked throughout the whole of His earthly life along the narrow and sorrowful path, and no other. He was continually persecuted, endured many reproaches, mockeries, and tribulations—and finally a shameful death on the cross between two thieves.

Let us follow Christ! Let us be humbled as He was! Like Him, let us not refuse to be accounted deceivers and madmen: let us not spare our honor, let us not turn our face from spitting or our cheeks from blows; let us seek neither the glory, nor the beauty, nor the pleasures belonging to this world; let us complete our earthly sojourn as strangers who have nowhere to lay their head; let us receive, let us receive the reproaches, humiliations, and contempt of men as the inalienable attributes of the path we have chosen; let us struggle openly and secretly against the thoughts of pride, striving with all our might to cast down those thoughts of our old self, which seeks to revive its “I” under various plausible pretexts. Then the Son of God, who said “I will dwell in them and walk among them” (2 Cor. 6:16), will appear in our heart and grant us authority and power to bind the strong man, to plunder his vessels, to tread upon the asp and the basilisk, to trample them underfoot.[1]

Let us reject murmuring, let us reject complaints about our lot, let us reject the sorrow and anguish of heart from which weak souls suffer more than from the sorrows themselves. Let us reject every thought of vengeance and of repaying evil with evil. “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay”, said the Lord (Rom. 12:19).

Do you wish to bear sorrows with ease and comfort? Let death for Christ be dear to you. Let this death stand unceasingly before your eyes. Mortify yourself daily by abstaining from all sinful desires of flesh and spirit; mortify yourself by rejecting your own will and by rejecting the self-justifications brought forward by the falsely-named reason and the deceitful conscience of the old self; mortify yourself by vividly imagining and depicting to yourself your inevitable death. We are given the commandment to follow Christ, taking up our cross. This means: we must always be ready to die for Christ with joy and gladness. If we dispose ourselves thus, we shall easily bear every sorrow, visible and invisible.

If a person is willing to die for Christ, what tribulation, what insult, will he not endure with magnanimity?

Our sorrows seem heavy to us precisely because we do not wish to die for Christ, do not wish to enclose in Him alone all our desires, all our hopes, all our understanding, all our possessions, all our very existence.

One who strives to follow Christ and to be His co-heir must be a zealous imitator of His sufferings. Those who love Christ and are His followers reveal and prove their hidden pledge by this: that they endure every sorrow sent to them by Him not only with good cheer, but with eagerness, zeal, joy, and thanksgiving, placing all hope upon Christ.

Such patience is a gift of Christ.

This gift will be received by one who asks for it from Christ with humble and constant prayer, demonstrating the sincerity of his desire to receive the priceless spiritual gift of patience by compelling and painfully forcing his unwilling heart to endure all the sorrows and temptations that meet and befall him.[2] Amen.

This article is drawn chiefly from the 7th Homily of the Venerable Macarius the Great. See Chapters 13–18.