“God knows every person from before the foundation of the world and provides their unique life and the specific conditions of their earthly way that are literally the best possible conditions for them.”

This is a convicting statement as Fr. Hopko explains that it is pride that leads us to say things like, if only I would have been born in this time period, or into a wealthy family, or this or that way… We think we know better than God what is best for us! It is a awe-inspiring and humbling thought to know that God has placed us exactly where and when we need to be, and given us everything we need.

Another quote that touched me was:

“…’form of life’ is not necessarily a job or profession. For example, some people may be called to suffer on this earth and to bear the results of fallen humanity in the most violent manner—to be victimized by disease, affliction, or both physical and mental disability; to be the objects of other people’s cares or disdain.”

Our vocation isn’t necessarily tied to what we do in this world, but rather who we are becoming. Being a doctor, lawyer, or engineer should not be an identity but rather a means to an end. Furthermore, we are instructed to bear illnesses that come to us patiently knowing that it is God who has allowed them and is using this vocation of suffering as a means for salvation.

This pamphlet also touches on the ‘ways of  salvation’ that the Lord has given us:

“Some will sanctify their lives being married; others will be single. Some will do it in clerical orders; others as lay people. Some will be monastic; most will live in the everyday secular world.”

But it also affirms the vocation we share in common:

“In a certain sense, every person has the same vocation, which is to be a saint… We can cooperate with God. We can share His holiness. We can become, as the saints themselves teach us, all that God Himself is by His gracious action in our lives”

These last two quotes really sum up the entire matter for me:

“In the eyes of God none is better than the other. None is higher or more praiseworthy. Each must find his or her own way and glorify God through it. Ultimately this is all that matters”

“Being faithful were we are is the basic sign that we will God’s will for our lives”

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! (download by clicking this link or read below)

photo courtesy of Nickolay Khoroshkov

Rewind to a year ago as 2016 gave way to 2017 and 2017 gave way to 2018; I was confronted by a what felt like an endless string of gut wrenching tragedies, dashed hopes and unkindness from the least expected of places. Sadness I hadn’t felt in years gripped my heart, threatening to freeze me to the bone, squeezing forcefully from it all traces of peace and courage.

I’m still raw from it all. I’m still prone to tears in the middle of the night. I’m still tired.

Sometimes shadow days turn to shadow months which snowball and avalanche into a relentless shadow year. I’m still waiting for winter to end and the snow to melt. My heart is left wondering why must this earthly life be riddled with so so so much loss and grief? How long Lord…Left with no solutions, no answer and in the absence of any feelings of warmth and bravery I have come to hardly recognise myself. Suffering has a way of stripping us naked as we confront the silence.

It is there in that silence that I have been wrestling with the question:

Who will I become after the coldest winter in a thousand freezing years?

I have spent a year flitting back and forth between answers, with no escape and no clue in the world what to do or where to go. Looking at this question and then looking at my distress and crippling disappointment of how different things should have been. “Lord, had you been here…” 

We’re told to expect trials in life when we’ve done something wrong, when something is not quite right in our relationship with God – but what happens when we feel we really did try to do what we were supposed to do, yet we are consumed by the shadow of our troubling sorrow. This is sorrow compounded by sorrow. Not only is there pain and loss but there is the crushing sense of God’s absence.

Silence and solitude can be the place of great transformation where we “struggle against the compulsions of the false self, and the encounter with the loving God who offers himself as the substance of the new self” but it can also be the most terrifying place when it feels like death and evil, are breathing down your neck, obliterating any sense of safety and comfort, and heightening the sense of inescapable frailty. Sometimes I have wrestled, other times I have taken one look at those questions, slammed the door of my heart when anger flared and smouldered and shut out the morning, all the while feeding the darkness. I don’t know what has brought me back but between grace and faithful friends that refuse to give up or go away, I find myself home again in silence and solitude, with my pain and my God.

So this season I am standing at the brink of the abyss of despair knowing all I have left is naked trust and naked hope that God is still God despite all of the evidence to the contrary, despite the agony and confusion and injustice of it all.

Can I say with Job, “Even if He slay me, yet will I trust in Him”? 

Do I turn to Christ or deny Christ (perhaps not so much with my words, but by my actions)?

Do I continue to love others or begin to blame, accuse and condemn others?

Do I become lost in self pity and never-ending reflection?

Do I thank God for all things, or do I grumble in my heart, demanding an explanation and another life?

Every difficult and painful circumstance in our life is a source of temptation. Because we are faced with a choice to say “You can do everything, And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You”(Job 42:2)…or to doubt Him. But with every temptation there is an opportunity.  An opportunity to grow in humility and patience.

Do I see myself as much more broken, much poorer, much more sinful and confused and clueless than I had expected?

Do I use my pain to at least strive to choose, to commit my self to God and trust in Him despite everything?

Do I see the silence and solitude as a gift to embrace, to turn death into resurrection, the gift to turn earth into heaven?

Do I remain obedient to Christs’ commands even when I feel abandoned like all this pain has somehow happened behind his back?

I am learning that who I will become after the coldest winter, begins and ends in how I answer these questions. But answering ‘yes’ boldly to those questions isn’t a given, not for me anyway. These are outright miracles – the working of grace in my life. I am humiliated and embarrassed to admit how far I’ve fallen from answering ‘yes.’ This is how, I suppose, I must learn to depend completely on the grace of God. In reality the most of what I can do is to lie down and wait. He wills my obedience despite my disappointment but if it does not always come as easily as I would like, then I remain waiting, knocking, seeking, asking – with the assurance that if I do such things I will in the end receive what I have sought. There is humility in this.

It was said that Saint Anthony had a vision of the world full of snares and traps. In a loud voice he cried out, “Lord, who can overcome these snares and traps?” A gentle voice was heard saying, “The humble.”

Rather than ask for humility, I ask God for mercy acknowledging that I am not humble, that I am not “patient in evils for His love’s sake.” If “humility is nothing but the disappearance of self in the vision that God is all” what does this mean in overcoming the traps of suffering? I offer up my pain like I offer up myself as a living sacrifice through “ardent pursuit of prayer and the outpouring of tears” knowing I am too spiritually dull to know what to do about my pain—except to beg for His help.

Humility is using our present circumstances, no matter how powerless and paralysed we feel, as an opportunity to grow in faith, hope, and love and to better serve Him and our neighbours. Perhaps this is why resting our aching spirit outside the gates of repentance when the world beckons to give us relief from our pain is the hardest part of the silence and solitude.

Humility is continuing to love Him and not forsake what He loves when we are broken, despite how unsatisfying obedience and holiness may feel, which in turn creates a place in us for peace to dwell. There is no peace when we lash out in bitterness and despondency.

Humility is trusting Christ’s tender compassion to provide not what I want but what I need, because He is a good Father. It is doing the next right thing. So putting one foot in front of the other, I find snippets of contentment and calm, I show up for the sacraments and for prayer and I show up in the every day lives of my neighbours to be a salt and a light and to share in their joys and sorrows.

Faithfulness in the midst of dying to ourselves is even more precious than joy after Christ’s Resurrection and the relief of despair. Joy and thanksgiving in tribulation, rooted in the knowledge that I am radically loved by a God who is perfecting me, may be the most precious of all, though this joy and gratitude often eludes me. I am certain in the Resurrection we will see with spiritual eyes and we will weep with understanding, remorse, relief, and immeasurable gratitude. Our shadow days will be over. Winter will end.

“Complete trust in God – that’s what holy humility is. Complete obedience to God, without protest, without reaction, even when some things seem difficult and unreasonable. Abandonment to the hands of God.” Elder Porphyrios

“For in proportion to your humility you are given patience in your woes; and in proportion to your patience, the burden of your afflictions is made lighter and you will find consolation; in proportion to your consolation, your love of God increases; and in proportion to your love, your joy in the Holy Spirit is magnified.” St Isaac the Syrian

“Instinctively we cry, “Make haste unto me.” But He does not always respond at once. Like fruit on a tree , our soul is left to scorch in the sun, to endure the cold wind, the scorching wind, to die of thirst or be drowned in the rain. But if we do not let go of the hem of His garment, all will end well.” Elder Sophrony

God saves the humble who cannot save themselves.

When I am in safety and strength, when I can look around me and breathe out with joy that “life is good,” does that heighten my belief that I am loved and protected by a God who is Almighty? Does that make me believe that He is infinitely good?

When I am in chaos, in the midst of fire and in storm, am I prone to believe that He is less merciful, less loving, less of Who I always thought He is?

I’d like to concede the latter to be false, but the evidence of my thoughts and actions beg to plead a different case.

Because a vulnerable 20-year old never deserved the abuse he endured.

A 7-year old girl should never know how it feels to be sexually abused.

No one should be burned alive in the place they call home.

A father, a brother, an uncle in Cleveland, should have sold his car peacefully without a gunshot wound leading to his death.

The news headlines should never need to report 13 deaths and 100 injuries in Barcelona.

And at 2am no one should ever hear that there is a foreign mass growing uninvited in their sister’s brain.

Yet these events and ones of even greater calamity continue on, and here we are, humanity in all our helplessness, left to fend for ourselves, left wounded and crying out to end all the earth shattering pain that surrounds us. And there are those of us who have sang every single hallelujah, who have been pushed further than our knees, face to the ground, wondering ‘how dare you God’ allow any of this to happen.

How dare you,

God.

Amidst the thousands of unanswered why’s, there is a man who is sick named Lazarus, the brother of a servant woman, Mary. Upon hearing of his deathly sickness, Christ should have ran to heal his ailing body, to wipe away his physical suffering and the emotional turbulence Mary and Martha were experiencing. But He didn’t.

“So, when He (Jesus) heard that he (Lazarus) was sick, He stayed two more days in the place where He was.”

John 11:6

He stayed a long and dragged out 4 days, allowing deaths grip to take hold of Lazarus’ weak body, and grief to sweep through his family like a storm.

Why didn’t He stop this?

Why didn’t He care?

Did the sacrifice of the weeping woman at his feet deserve such grief?

How dare you,

God.

The corpse was left rotting for 48hrs in the tomb, then “Jesus said to them (his disciples) plainly, “Lazarus is dead. And I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, that you may believe. Nevertheless let us go to him.” John 11:14-15

What about Lazarus and Martha?

What about all their family and friends?

Was their suffering worth the belief of the 12 followers?

“Then, when Mary came where Jesus was, and saw Him, she fell down at His feet, saying to Him, “Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not have died.””

John 11:32

What about Mary’s sake?

“Therefore, when Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her weeping, He groaned in the spirit and was troubled. And He said, “Where have you laid him?”

They said to Him, “Lord, come and see.”

Jesus wept.”

John 11:33-35

Jesus wept.

Had he come earlier, would he not have spared himself and all of us the tears and the grief?

Jesus wept.

When I realise that too many questions will always remain unaccounted for, maybe those two words are enough to let all the questions remain unanswered. Maybe those two words are the only words that can really soften our hearts to a God who not only allows calamity, but weeps and grieves over it too. Because our alternative is resentment and anger; which I have found to be the heaviest loads to carry, too great for our fragile human hearts.

Maybe deeper than all our questions and pain, the soul cannot rid itself of a truth it bears; the presence and goodness of God. Maybe this is the real problem: the collision between the world’s realities and the Truth give birth to a frustration. A frustration of struggling to live in the the tension of the Truth that God is so good, yet so much calamity surrounds us.

In the tension, sometimes all there is to do, is to raise our hands in surrender, pleading with the Psalmist,

“Restore us, O God;
Cause Your face to shine,
And we shall be saved!”

Psalm 80:3

There are questions unanswered, there will be a million more.

Here’s to our fragile, questioning, human hearts, that are fighting to hope and believe in the glory (“This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” John 11:4)

No one can ever minimise your suffering.

God is good. Life can be hard.

Yet His wounds are not the end of anything..

There is a question that I believe can transform our relationships, a question we need to all ask each other more:

How can I comfort you?

Above all, remember “if there is any encouragement in Christ, any comfort from love, any participation in the Spirit, any affection and sympathy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves…Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself.” (Philippians 2)

It is the comfort God has lavished on us that calls us to comfort others. Because of the pain we’ve felt, we no longer have to be strangers to the pain of another. When we choose to walk through the difficult times with Him by surrendering our ego and emptying ourself, we can receive the tenderness and gentleness of His healing presence. When we experience the power within His humility that invites, the power within His soft touch that had no fear in gently touching the blind or lame, nor writing carefully in the sand to help another; we will know how to comfort others out of our own ache.

Yet how often do I ask my loved ones how they need to be comforted? How often do I wonder how they receive comfort best? How often do I pay attention to learn which actions or words resonate deeply with them and which don’t? How often am I quick to comfort those in my life in the way I like to be comforted, neglecting that they are not me? Comfort has a language of its own and there is something undeniably powerful in a friend who knows how to speak the language of comfort that your soul understands, like feeling that everything you lost in the pain is coming back to you.

“The most important ingredient we put into any relationship is not what we say or what we do, but what we are.”  Stephen Covey

I still remember the day I found out that I had to withdraw from medical school. I remember wanting nothing more than to run from the torment of failure as I felt the foundation that I had built my dreams, hopes and even identity crumble. That was the same day I tasted comfort, like the Promised Land dripping of milk and honey in the midst of a wilderness, in a way I had never known before.

My friend stayed with me, cried with me, wrapped me in a red blanket and sang Psalm 13 to me.

“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me?…But I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation. I will sing to the Lord, because he has dealt bountifully with me.” 

Divine comfort took on flesh in my friend’s faithfulness to stay. This Psalm embodies the true unsurpassed beauty of comfort. Though it may not change our circumstances, though it may not take away the pain, it strengthens our heart to praise in defiance of the moment. True comfort is a fortress against wailing winds and the fearful elements of disaster that threaten to swallow our home. Because my friend stayed, I know that it takes an embrace and a shirt to stain with mascara and tears, to remember to breathe, find a moment to be still – just like that, I settle, soften and make space for the pain. The harsh voice of judgement drops to a whisper and I remember again that as much as I want to stop the madness and control the chaos, I can ask for the grace to let go through the healing found in comfort. Together with those who are long-suffering enough to bear our burdens, who choose to decrease as He increases in them by comforting us, we walk slowly into the mystery. The mystery that more than answers or solutions people desire comfort. More than fleeing from a broken and contrite heart, refusing the suffering, God desires our surrender. Surrender is not defeat, but victory. To learn how to comfort and to be willing to receive comfort from one another is how we win.

“You cannot be too gentle, too kind. Shun even to appear harsh in your treatment of each other. Joy, radiant joy, streams from the face of him who gives and kindles joy in the heart of him who receives. All condemnation is from the devil. Never condemn each other…instead of condemning others, strive to reach inner peace.” St Seraphim of Sarov

Sometimes comfort comes to us in unexpected packages; His is the gift of his own life within us, sharing His own joy and love in the midst of the confusion and anxiety that encloses us, in the midst of all the ways we try to escape from the pain outside of His life in us.

With His life in me, I am given a choice, to waste my pain and the pain of others or to give and accept comfort freely. And so as with all of life, it is always choices such as these that determine where we are going and how our own journey moulds us and influences those around us. It is a choice to be a healing presence to others. With this choice, pray to be sensitive to how the person before you longs to be comforted. Be brave enough to give sacrificially to meet each other’s need to be comforted and to ask: how can I comfort you?

“Love is not contingent on our wholeness. Love is with us in our shame, our fear, our weakness, and is with us through it. And Love has the final word”

“What does it mean to become a healing presence? And probably more important, how do we increase our ability to do that? I think already you can see that this definition is an operational definition for love delivered; love on the street; love in our lives; love with each other.

Let’s look at what a healing presence is. It means that when someone, you or me or some other human, has done something to give me strength or hope. And you might ask in your life recently, who in your life did give you strength or hope when you felt in need a little? And what were the ingredients of that? How was that done? That’s the way we learn how to do that for each other. It means that I do something and give someone else what Christ gives through me. Grace has a life of its own. And in that sense, healing can become contagious. Others feel it, experience, and see it, and then perhaps do it a little more themselves.

Christ is our physician; our complete healer. And He wants us to be His humanity on this earth for each other, to the extent that we can. We’re His healing presence for each other or not. We are a healing presence to others when we give them strength; we have an encounter with them. We give them strength when we give them hope. They leave us, whether it’s a very brief or a sustained encounter, with strength and hope.”

Albert Rossi