Suffering

Those who are blind from their infancy, why are they so? I will not tell you, until you promise me to receive baptism, and, being baptized, to live aright. It is not right to give you the solution of these questions. Preaching is not meant just for amusement. For even if I solve this, on the back of this follows another question; of such questions there is a bottomless deep. Therefore do not get into a habit of looking to have them solved for you, or else we shall never stop questioning. For look, if I solve this, I simply lead the way to question upon question, numberless as the snowflakes. So this is what we learn, rather to raise questions, not to solve the questions that are raised. For even if we do solve them, we have not solved them altogether, but (only) as far as man’s reasoning goes. The proper solution of such questions is faith—the knowing that God does all things justly and mercifully and for the best; that to comprehend the reason of them is impossible. This is the one solution, and another better than this does not exist.

The fear and faith of God ought to make you prepared for everything, whether it is the loss of private estate, the constant and cruel harassment of your limbs by agonizing disorders, or the deadly and mournful wrench from wife, from children, from departing dear ones. Do not let these things be offenses to you, but battles; nor let them weaken nor break the Christian’s faith, but rather show forth his strength in the struggle, since all the injury inflicted by present troubles is to be despised in the assurance of future blessings. Unless the battle has gone before, there cannot be a victory. When there shall have been, in the onset of battle, the victory, then also the crown is given to the victors. For the helmsman is recognized in the tempest; in the warfare the soldier is proved. It is a wanton display when there is no danger. Struggle in adversity is the trial of the truth.

To the divine providence it has seemed good to prepare in the world to come for the righteous good things, which the unrighteous will not enjoy; and for the wicked evil things, by which the good will not be tormented. But as for the good things of this life, and its ills, God has willed that these should be common to both, so that we might not too eagerly covet the things that wicked men are seen equally to enjoy, nor shrink with an unseemly fear from the ills that even good men often suffer. There is, too, a very great difference in the purpose served both by those events that we call adverse and those called prosperous. For the good man is neither uplifted with the good things of time, nor broken by its ills; but the wicked man, because he is corrupted by this world’s happiness, feels himself punished by its unhappiness.