Română
Let us learn the value of suffering from someone who suffered 6 years of torture in Communist prisons for his Christian faith. Later in his life, Fr. Arsenie Papacioc was the spiritual father of St. Mary Monastery in Techirghiol, Romania.
Fr. Arsenie Papacioc:
Please believe me! I was a popular young man, I did sports, I was a star, the newspapers called me ‘the blonde panther’, well… I didn’t benefit more from anything else than from suffering… from Cross… suffering…
It helped me to know myself, to see that God is the One who is in all our movements, in every moment…
Don’t you know that not a single hair from your heads will be lost without His will? These are not my words, they are His words: “even the very hairs of your head are all numbered” [Lk. 12:17].
And everything that happens to us, it happens for us to wake up even more, for us to grow more, to understand the most beautiful and true meanings of love.
Suffering has not reached its purpose (if it is seen as a “therapy”) until you gain a benefit from it.
Don’t think that God has a stick in His hand, trying to punish us, “you did wrong, take this”. Not like that. It would greatly ease people’s spiritual lives if they knew how much God loves us. God corrects us, through an illness, through any means, in order for us to become better people. Because no matter how good you are, you are not good enough…
Apart from the sins that we all know, there is a whole series of sins that the world doesn’t know, which are called “sins of omission”, that is when you fail to do the good that you can do.
How many times have you had the opportunity to do good and you didn’t do it… Well… This is already a state of sin, that is, a lack of perfection.
You should know that through suffering, one manages to talk to himself more than in any other situation. To know himself, to compare himself… And then, you see, suffering gives you the opportunity of disinfection and sanitation — to know yourself, so that you can overcome yourself — which is a huge victory…
