WHY THE PAIN AND SORROW

Περιγραφή

The experience of human life reveals to us throughout its life span the whole meaning and tragicness of pain as well as the feeling of distress. Of course, in our days the modern human-being tends to ignore the reason why pain is caused to us and the meaning it conveys for our redemption. For this reason, we see that a person nowadays to avoid in any way possible the idea of agony tents to be subjected to a life-form of false illusions, comforts, full of life’s riches and pleasures, as well as artificial wonders with false promised lands, which tend to be created by various elements such as hallucinogenic drugs and narcotics. Yet, pain and sorrow is a hard reality of human life and within a person’s history. It is found in the life of a faithful person who is shown to be in a constant battle in pledge for his or her salvation that tends to be present throughout their spiritual life. “For those who seek comfort, do not have the grace of God,” says Abba Isaac the Syrian. Moreover, he states elsewhere in his writings “My brother, the journey of a faithful Christian is a daily bearing of a cross”. Without pain in our existence, we become an animation of an animalistic life. What is meant by this is that without pain and sorrow into our lives we tend to be like wildings of nature, feeling painless and without a purpose. The pain is the crucifixion that each of us bares, it is the path and the testament of our Lord Jesus Christ that wants us to be friends and not slaves to his will, wanting us to be free and not suppressed.

Table of contents

The Panhuman problem
Origin 11
The pain of the just 12
The Character of Sorrow
a) Pedagogical character 14
(b) Proof of love towards God 17
(c) Causes for spiritual progress. 19
(d) They reinstate us to God 20
(e) It is a gift of love, from God 21
(f) They constitute a form
Of humbleness 22
(g) They urge us towards virtue 23
(h) They vanish our sins 25
(i) “The stigmata” 26
(j) Its richness and auxiliary 27
Death 28
The death of an infant 31
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Part II. FACING THE PAIN AND SORROW
In General 38
The Final Response 41
The certainty 41
Summary 43
“Footprints” 44