The Meaning of Suffering

The Eight Deadly Sins and the Fight Against Them, Part 9B

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5
Part 6A,
Part 6B, Part 7A, Part 7B
Part 8A, Part 8B, Part 9A

Photo: vk.com Photo: vk.com     

We’ve already talked about how sorrow can be connected with difficulties and woes. But some are plunged into the abyss of despondency by sorrows, while others emerge from them with honor: Suffering bends but doesn’t break them. It all depends on our approach to sadness. In general, it’s our own attitude towards anything that makes it either good or bad.

Whether we want it or not, suffering is inevitable. Not a single person on earth has gone untouched by suffering. Suffering, sickness, and death came into the world with the fall of Adam. Human nature changed, and the whole world changed. But I repeat, suffering and sorrows can be treated in different ways. First, we have to remember that God never sends anyone a cross beyond his strength. He’s our Father and He knows better than us what His children can bear and what they can’t. God is faithful, Who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it (1 Cor. 10:13). Second, a period of consolation will always follow after a period of sorrow. If something’s taken away from someone in one place, it means it’s added in another place.

Nothing just happens in our lives—every event has meaning. And God doesn’t allow us to suffer meaninglessly. Either we suffer to cleanse our sins, so as not to suffer in eternal life, or sorrows are sent to us to protect us from falling into sin and other dangers. Another meaning of sorrows is the cleansing effect they have on our soul. Suffering (if we approach it properly) makes us better, purer, kinder. It makes us look at ourselves differently, help others and feel compassion for them. Any priest can tell you how many of his parishioners came to the Church through the trials and tribulations of life: relatives dying, serious illnesses, losing their job, and so on. Unfortunately, when everything’s good and going well, people don’t rush to church. Sorrows—both our own and those of others—make us think about the most important issues: the meaning of life, the salvation of the soul, sympathy for someone else’s grief.

Once there was a major accident in England—a bus crash with children; many died, many suffered, and the Christian author C. S. Lewis asked how God could allow such a terrible tragedy. And he responded: “Suffering is the chisel with which the Creator, like a sculptor, carves a beautiful statue out of a man.” What is any disaster? It is, apart from great grief, an opportunity to show all your best human qualities. To show compassion, give help and support to the suffering, to comfort the grieving, to sympathize with them, to support them in difficult times and to think about many things yourself. For those suffering, it’s an opportunity to turn to God with fervent prayer, to reflect on what we perhaps don’t think about in the everyday hustle and bustle, about the salvation of the soul.

What’s more important to God: the body of a man, which gets sick, gets old, and dies, or his immortal soul? Of course, it’s the soul, and that’s why He allows us to suffer. And sometimes after many years, we see that these trials weren’t sent by chance—we needed them. Archpriest Nikolai Guryanov spent many years in the camps for his Orthodox faith. And he said he had no regrets about the years he spent in prison. Many people who went through the hell of the camps, prison, exile, the loss of their health, didn’t regret it and later recalled this period with gratitude to God. And it cannot be otherwise, because if they had a different approach to life, they simply wouldn’t have survived these terrible trials.

Man himself doesn’t know what he’s capable of. Some endure inhuman suffering, while others fall into melancholy, despair, and are ready to die because of minor troubles. When a man decides to commit suicide (if, of course, it’s not caused by mental illness), it’s always weakness, cowardice, and lack of faith. A suicidal man wants to escape from temporary, earthly suffering; he can’t endure it, but he doesn’t know what awaits him there, where his passion will torment him eternally.

Everything the Lord does is for the best—this should be our daily motto. Quite often we’re troubled and disturbed not only by real, but also by supposed, hypothetical sorrows and trials. A woman I know used to say: “Let’s deal with troubles as they come.” By the way, she lived to be 103. There’s a very good remedy for anxiety and agitation: prayer. I’ve experienced it more than once, worrying about my children. Every time I worriedly thought about them being so far from home, I said a short prayer for their health and salvation, and the worry subsided.

Sorrow and depression are healed by gratitude to God, faith, and trust in Him. And in general, it’s simply impossible to deal with the passion of sorrow without faith in God. If a man doesn’t believe in anything, sooner or later grief, sorrow, and despair will return to him; even at the end of his life, because he has no real hope.

I serve in a cemetery church, and I speak quite often with people who are grieving the death of relatives and friends. The passing of a loved one is indeed a huge shock. It throws many people into a state of grief. We believers have great consolation in our sorrow. God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, Christ tells us (Mt. 22:32). The human soul is alive; it doesn’t die, and death isn’t the end of life, but a transition to another existence. Although, of course, it’s always a separation from loved ones, but not an eternal separation. What we love about someone: his attitude towards us, his thoughts, feelings, character—all of this belongs to his immortal soul, not to his body, which gets sick, ages, changes, and then dies. The soul has no age at all.

The second consolation that Orthodox Christians have is prayer for the departed. Our departed look for only one thing from us—our fervent prayers for them. They can no longer pray for themselves. We can only pray, repent of our sins, and change our lives while we’re alive on this earth. And prayer is a thread connecting us with our loved ones, an opportunity to fulfill the duty of love. After all, a man who loses relatives and friends often feels a sense of guilt. He wants to do something more for them, to give them his love. And he has every opportunity to do so. He has to go to church more often, submit commemorations for the departed, read the Psalter for the departed at home, give alms in their memory, and in general, constantly prayerfully remember them.

Our grief, sadness, and depression are major hindrances to prayer. A man in such a state can’t do anything—even eating, drinking, and thinking are difficult for him, even more so praying. Therefore, if we love our neighbors, we have to cope with our condition, at least for their sake, because they really need our help and love. And love continues; it doesn’t cease with death, because among the properties of love is eternality. Love never faileth (1 Cor. 13:8).

There’s another very important point to remember when you lose loved ones. Unfortunately, there are unspoken and completely incorrect (non-Orthodox) rituals of mourning the dead. This includes lamentations, wailing at the coffin, condolences filled with dark anguish, and other actions. Many think this needs to be done in memory of the deceased, to express their love for him. Tell me, if one of us died, would we want our relatives, our loved ones to fall into black despair, depression, and perhaps even wind up in the hospital with a nervous breakdown? Of course not. If we love them, we wish them well, we want everything to be good for them, for them to be happy. And our departed ones want that too—that we live, rejoice in life, remember them with prayer and kind words. Christian sorrow is bright. The commemoration of an Orthodox man isn’t mourning, but seeing him off into eternity. We remember the good deeds of the deceased with gratitude, and of course, we pray for him, wishing him the Kingdom of Heaven.

Occupational Therapy

I’ll say a little about one of the necessary means for battling sorrow and despondency. St. Ambrose of Optina said: “Boredom is the granddaughter of despondency and the daughter of laziness.” That is, laziness and idleness give birth to boredom, and boredom gives birth to despondency and sorrow.1 The demons of sorrow always hover around an idle, lazy man—he’s easy prey for them. A purposeful, hard-working man very rarely feels anguish. When anguish strikes, the first symptom is that he doesn’t want to do anything—complete enfeeblement. Here you need to force yourself to do something step by step. A sorrowful man simply must compel himself to work, although any labor in a state of depression is already a small feat. In the film, The Very Same Munchhausen,2 the mayor says: “Every day I have to get to the magistrate by 9:00 in the morning, and I won’t say it’s a feat, but generally there’s something heroic in it.”

The majority of people who have confessed the sin of sorrow or despondency to me didn’t have any constant activity or work. It’s very good when a sorrowful man can find some kind of work to distract him. But even if you don’t have some task, you have to force yourself to do any simple, straightforward work. Every hour of the day, and even minute, should be filled with something, so as not to give room to dark thoughts. You can’t think about two things at once, so you have to replace the negative with the positive and think about good things.

There was an elder who had a disciple. And one day the elder heard demons crying out: “Woe to us because of these monks. We can’t approach the elder, nor his disciple, because he destroys and builds, and we never see him idle.” The elder was puzzled: “What does his disciple destroy and build?” Then he went to the disciple, and the disciple showed him stones from which he built walls and then destroyed them again. “Doing this keeps me from a feeling of despondency.” The elder understood that the demons couldn’t approach the disciple because he was never idle, and he encouraged him to continue his labor.

Washing, cleaning, household chores—these things can always fill our time, even when we don’t have a permanent job. They say: “If a woman has fallen into despair and wants to take her life, she should take some soap and clothespins and go do the laundry.” No matter how hard it is to force yourself to do some tasks, it’s necessary. I read some wonderful advice one time: “If you’re in sorrow and grief and it seems that no one loves you, go help your neighbor; do a good deed, preferably for someone who’s even worse off than you.” Thereby, we kill two birds with one stone: We distract ourselves from melancholy and we feel like we’re needed. And we’ll also realize that it’s not us who needs pity and help, but our neighbor.

Sin Multiplies Sorrow

What else can cause sorrow and depression? The burden of a sinful life, often unconfessed—unrepented sins. Can you imagine what it means to go about with such a burden? After all, every man has a conscience, the voice of God. And if a man doesn’t know how to be delivered of his sins, how to repent of them, he often falls into despair. This requires a detailed confession, of your whole life, and fruits worthy of repentance.

A young woman once turned to a well-known psychotherapist with a complaint about anxiety and depression. She had a very stormy youth: many lustful relations, an unsuccessful marriage, then divorce. Moreover, she was raised in a traditional, patriarchal family, where they tried (unsuccessfully) to instill strict moral principles in her. The situation is clear to us: The voice of her conscience and shame for her sinful, dissolute life upbraided her, and since she didn’t know how to do the right thing, it plunged her into sorrow. Besides sorrow, she was tormented by fears that something had to happen to her, that she’ll surely have to bear some punishment for the sins of her youth.

So what did the doctor advise her? He calmed her down, telling her that’s how youth should be—stormy and happy, that she’s not guilty of anything before anyone. He didn’t remove the problem, but only covered it over, lulling his patient’s conscience to sleep. Obviously, such “treatment” will only provide short-term relief. The problem, that is, the burden of former sins, remains, and the voice of the conscience can’t be completely stifled. You can truly overcome depression caused by shame for your sins only by repenting of them and being purified in Confession. A confessed sin becomes as though it never happened if a man sincerely repents of it. It’s very good to bear some penance from a priest. And of course, to set out on the path of correction and struggle against sin, for the sin is confessed, but its destructive consequences remain. The conscience, of course, can be suppressed; but, like a spring that has been covered with stones and poured over with concrete, it will sooner or later break through to the surface anyway.

To summarize, we fight with sorrow by strengthening our faith and hope in God. We have to learn to see His innumerable benefits in our life and be grateful for them. And, of course, we have to fight this passion with unceasing labor. This labor is personal. Because the rescue of the drowning is the work of the drowning themselves. Sorrow, despondency is a slackening of the will, and only the man himself can discipline his will. “God doesn’t save us without us.” He sends us help and means and we have to use them.

By the way, there’s a parable about this, also about a drowning man. A man’s house was inundated during a flood, and the water kept rising higher and higher. He had to move up to the attic, but he believed that God would save him. Some people going by on a boat shouted to him: “Jump to us, we’ll save you!” He responded: “No, God will save me!” But the water kept getting higher, and he had to climb out on the roof. A raft floated by, but he didn’t take advantage of it, thinking the Lord would save him. This unfortunate man was already up to his chest in water when he saw a large board floating by, but he still didn’t want to grab it, thinking God would help him in some miraculous way. So the man died, and his soul went to God and he asked: “Lord, why didn’t You help me. I had such faith, I prayed to You so hard!” And God told him: “Thrice I sent you means of salvation, and you never used them.”

The passions of sorrow and despondency, although they’re related, aren’t the same thing.

This is how St. Ignatius (Brianchaninov) defines the sin of sorrow:

Grief, anguish, cutting off hope in God, doubt in God’s promises, ingratitude to God for all that’s happened, faint-heartedness, impatience, lack of self-reproach, being offended by others, murmuring, renunciation of the struggle of the arduous Christian life, the inclination to abandon this path. Turning away from the burden of the cross, that is, the struggle with passions and sin.

And this is what the Holy Hierarch writes about despondency:

Laziness toward every good deed, especially toward prayer. Abandoning the Church’s rule of prayer. Loss of the remembrance of God. Abandoning unceasing prayer and soul-profiting reading. Inattention and haste in prayer. Negligence. Irreverence. Idleness. Excessive indulgence of the flesh with sleep, lying about, and all kinds of comfort. Seeking salvation without effort. Moving from place to place with the aim of avoiding hardships and deprivations. Frequent outings and visits to friends. Idle talk. Blasphemous utterances. Abandoning prostrations and other bodily struggles. Forgetting your sins. Forgetting Christ’s commandments. Carelessness. Captivity. Loss of the fear of God. Hardening of the heart. Insensibility. Despair.

But we’ll talk about despondency and the battle with it in the next article.

To be continued…

Archpriest Pavel Gumerov
Translation by Jesse Dominick

Pravoslavie.ru

6/16/2025

1 The flow of passions in St. Ambrose’s quote and Fr. Pavel’s explanation doesn’t seem to line up, but they both present the fact that the passions give rise to one another.—Trans.

2 A 1980 Soviet fantasy comedy-drama television film based on the character Baron Munchausen created by Rudolf Erich Raspe.—OC.

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