Even if we cannot see a connection between our suffering and our sins, this connection nonetheless exists.
“They repaid my good with evil.”
But if you love those to whom you do good, then you were already compensated in the form of the good which you have received because of your love.
Therefore, the good that you do with love, you always do to yourself.
The reward for virtue consists in the very knowledge of having done a good deed.
— Cicero
Proclaiming future salvation, Jesus announces to the people the necessary conditions for it on their side. It will be the fruit of love, selflessness, charity and forgiveness.
So if the liberation has not yet come, if it is still a time of hunger, a time of weeping, a time of oppression, then you have only yourselves to blame.
Have you fulfilled Christ’s commands? Have you done that which you were supposed to do? More than once you have tried to gain the right to break your old chains, to exit the dark, pitiful shelters into which you had been driven by an illegitimate power, and to build for yourselves a better place to dwell. Where did your efforts lead you? Why is it always the case that the things you have created with much toil are always so quickly destroyed? Why else, other than because you have become like the man who built his house on sand? The river rushed at the house, and the house could not withstand the force and fell, and its fall was great.
— Lamennais
When a human being realizes that the cause of his personal suffering lies in his personal delusion and focuses his actions on the destruction of the delusion, he does not complain about his suffering and often bears it with joy. But when such a person experiences suffering which he cannot see as being caused by a delusion, he thinks that he is experiencing something that should not be happening, and he asks himself: why, what for?—and, not finding an object on which to focus his actions, he complains about his suffering, and his suffering becomes a terrible torment.
When a person cannot see a connection between his suffering and his life, he can do one of two things: either continue to bear such suffering as senseless torments, or recognize that his suffering is an indication of his sins, as well as an indication of the means of delivering both himself and others from these sins.
At first glance, the suffering has no explanation and causes nothing but an ever growing despair and resentment which cannot be resolved. On second glance, the suffering causes the very activity that constitutes the movement of true life: consciousness of sin, liberation from delusions and obedience to the law of reason.
The legend of the fall of man—about sin and about redemption from suffering and death—is only a figurative expression of the connection between suffering and sin.
Only after experiencing suffering did I discover how closely related human souls are to each other. A good bout of suffering is all you need to understand all who suffer, and you almost know what you should say to them. Moreover, the mind itself clears up: the hitherto concealed field of people and their situations becomes known to you, and you can see what each person needs. Great is the God who makes us wiser. And what does he use to make us wiser? That same suffering, from which we run away and try to hide. It is through suffering and grief that we are destined to obtain the grains of wisdom that are not to be found in books.
— Gogol
For a human being who lives a spiritual life, suffering encourages self-perfection, enlightenment and a movement towards God. For such people, suffering can always be transformed into their life’s work.
Seek the cause of the evil from which you suffer in yourself. Sometimes this evil is a direct result of your actions, sometimes it has returned to you after a complex series of events, but its source is always in you, and salvation from it lies in changing how you act.
