Insights into Specific Characteristics of Suffering in the Framework of the Holy Scriptures and the Mission of the Orthodox Church
Insights into Specific Characteristics of Suffering in the Framework of the Holy Scriptures and the Mission of the Orthodox Church

Summary/Abstract: The most thoughtful, judicious, and severe teacher of all humanity is the soul’s great suffering. Wrapped in suffering and caught in the crucible of humility, tears, sighs, and wailing, it provokes the resolute shift from self-confidence towards the awareness of the human weakness. The ephemeral strength of the human being along with vain thoughts and temptation to rebel against God’s Laws are generally abandoned by a hopeless great suffering. However, for ultimate suffering, two alternatives will appear as liberating avenues of escape: faith and life in God or suicide. To choose one of them is sometimes contextual, but always root-dependent. The roots of the right religious knowledge, experience and practice of virtue, consciousness of the good or, equally important, a forgotten prayer from the distant past, a confrontation with a brother’s bitterness, a hand offered for escape to a suffering sister, will certainly make clear the decision of the Almighty God to raise the one who is suffering towards the Christian way of life. Therefore, no matter what the origin of the suffering in its manifold faces should be, the suffering person must return hopefully to God and maintain the ties to his own destiny. The family, friends, and doctors may relieve his pain and sorrow, but will hardly manage to restore a soul accused by a sin-tortured consciousness or injured by people-imposed deep humiliation. The latter state remains in God’s power to put things in the right condition. This paper will analyze the concept, origin, and types of suffering based mainly on the writings of the New and Old Testament, along with different aspects concerning the role of the missionary Church in healing her suffering members.

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