Suffering isn’t a sign you’re doing something wrong. It’s part of the Christian life.
That might sound harsh, especially if you grew up hearing that God wants you healthy, wealthy, and problem-free. But Orthodox Christianity has never taught that. We don’t believe God rewards faith with prosperity or that suffering means you lack belief. Christ himself suffered. The apostles suffered. The martyrs suffered. And we’re called to take up our cross daily, which means accepting the trials that come our way as part of following Jesus.
This doesn’t mean we go looking for pain or pretend everything’s fine when it’s not. It means we understand suffering differently. In Orthodox teaching, suffering can be redemptive. It can heal us. When we unite our pain to Christ’s cross through prayer and the sacraments, something happens. We’re changed.
Suffering and Healing
The Church Fathers saw suffering as medicine, not punishment. God acts as a physician, and trials can purify us like gold in the furnace. We’re sick with sin, our passions run wild, and sometimes the only way to heal is through difficulty that strips away our illusions.
St. John Chrysostom pointed out that when our souls are diseased, we usually feel nothing. But let the body suffer even a little and we panic. Suffering wakes us up. It shows us what we’re really attached to. It reveals where we’ve been trusting in money or comfort or control instead of God.
This is hard teaching. When you’re going through something difficult, a cancer diagnosis, a job loss, a hurricane that floods your house, it doesn’t feel like medicine. It feels like drowning. But the Orthodox approach isn’t to slap a Bible verse on it and call it good. It’s to bring that suffering into the life of the Church, to pray through it, to confess through it, to receive the Eucharist in the middle of it.
How We’re Supposed to Respond
The practical response to suffering in Orthodoxy is prayer. Not just asking God to take it away (though we can do that), but praying through the pain itself. The Jesus Prayer, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner”, becomes a lifeline. Elder Porphyrios, a Greek elder who died in 1991, suffered terribly from illness and still prayed constantly.
That’s not superhuman strength. That’s what happens when someone has learned to unite their suffering to Christ’s. Even honesty about our weakness is part of the process. We endure what we can. We ask for help. We keep coming back to prayer even when we fail.
The sacraments matter here too. Confession lets us bring our bitterness and anger and confusion to God without pretending we’re fine. The Eucharist unites us to Christ’s body and blood, which means we’re united to his suffering and his resurrection. Anointing of the sick isn’t last rites, it’s for healing, body and soul, in the middle of the struggle.
The Difference Between Redemptive Suffering and Despair
Not all suffering leads to God. Some suffering makes people bitter. Some hardens the heart. The difference isn’t in the suffering itself but in how we meet it.
The saints describe a person who endures troubles with thankfulness of soul and perseveres in difficulties, and who keeps his mind focused on Christ. Notice that the person still feels the bitterness. He feels it fully. But he didn’t let it turn him away from God.
The saints give advice for when we fail: if you fall, rise up again, and do not abandon your Physician. Despair is the real danger. Suffering that leads to despair cuts us off from God. Suffering that leads to repentance and trust opens us to healing.
This is why spiritual direction matters. When you’re in the middle of pain, you can’t always tell which way you’re going. A priest or spiritual father can help you discern whether this trial is drawing you closer to God or pushing you away. If it’s pushing you away, the remedy is the same: prayer, confession, the Eucharist, and getting back up.
Taking Up Your Cross
Jesus said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” Around here, where most folks grew up Baptist or non-denominational, that phrase often gets spiritualized into something vague. But in Orthodoxy it’s concrete. Your cross is the specific suffering you’re given: chronic pain, a difficult family situation, financial struggle, the slow work of battling your own pride or anger.
You don’t get to pick your cross. You don’t go looking for extra ones to prove how holy you are. But you do have to carry the one you’ve been given. And you carry it by staying in the Church, praying when you don’t feel like it, fasting even when it’s hard, confessing when you’d rather hide, and receiving Christ’s body and blood week after week.
Freedom is not the absence of difficulty. It is the ability to face difficulty without being destroyed by it, because you’re united to the One who conquered death itself.
Union with God Through the Cross
All of this points to theosis, our union with God. Suffering isn’t the goal. God is. But suffering, when we bring it to God instead of running from him, becomes one of the ways we’re transformed. Our passions are healed. Our pride is broken down. We learn to depend on grace instead of our own strength.
Christ entered into our suffering, and by doing so, he made it possible for our suffering to become a participation in his life. That’s the mystery at the heart of Orthodox spirituality. We don’t suffer alone. We suffer in Christ, and in him, even our pain can become a means of grace.
If you’re walking through something hard right now, don’t try to do it alone. Come to church. Talk to a priest. Pray the Jesus Prayer, even if it’s just a few words at a time. Receive the Eucharist. Let the Church carry you when you can’t carry yourself. That’s what we’re here for.
