Homily 63: To Those Who Find Hard to Bear All the Different Kinds of Difficulties Which Come Upon Us from All Sides

By: St. Gregory Palamas

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

"That evil which is evil in itself, namely sin, originates from us. On the other hand, what our senses perceive as evil, because it is grievous and painful, can also be from God who, like a physician, uses it to restrain and heal what is truly evil. When those who have sinned can be cured, He tends them in all sorts of ways, but if they are incurable, He even takes away their life for the salvation of the rest. Therefore we are to blame for our own misfortunes, since we make ourselves deserving of cauterizations, whereas He is our benefactor and Saviour in this, as He removes the real evil. Sometimes He exposes the valiant to attacks by afflictions which are not essentially evil, as a challenge. Just as illness was not created by God, although the creature who suffers from it was, so sin was not made by Him, although the rational soul created by Him willingly turns aside after it. This soul was honoured with free will and independent life, as without this honour it would have been pointless for it to be rational. Thus it received a will free from all necessity, and if it remains attentively in God and is united with Him by love, it keeps its good and natural life. But if it becomes as though satiated by this sacred residing in God, turning towards things below and the pleasures of the flesh by veering away from what is by nature good, it falls sick with what is evil by nature, sin, creating death for itself, alas, by voluntarily falling away from life…"