{"id":10258,"date":"2021-09-19T12:32:18","date_gmt":"2021-09-19T16:32:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=10258"},"modified":"2021-09-03T20:33:13","modified_gmt":"2021-09-04T00:33:13","slug":"elder-st-paisios-on-bearing-trials-and-illness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=10258","title":{"rendered":"Elder St Paisios on Bearing Trials and Illness\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When I was sixteen years old I asked God to give me a serious illness, a cancer, so that I would suffer for His love and glorify Him through my pain. I made this prayer for a long time. But my elder told me that this was egotism and that I was coercing God. God knows what He is doing. So I didn\u2019t continue with this prayer. But, you see, God did not forget my request and He gave me this benefaction after so many years!<\/p>\n<p>Now I do not pray for God to take away from me the thing I asked Him for. I am glad that I have it so that I can participate in His sufferings through my great love. I have the chastisement of God: For the Lord chastises the one he loves. My illness is a special favor from God, who is inviting me to enter into the mystery of His love and to try to respond with His own grace. But I am not worthy.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; \u2018Spiritual Struggle\u2019<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-10259\" src=\"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/o-300x199.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"199\" srcset=\"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/o-300x199.jpg 300w, https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/o-768x509.jpg 768w, https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/o-480x320.jpg 480w, https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/o.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was sixteen years old I asked God to give me a serious illness, a cancer, so that I would suffer for His love and glorify Him through my [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modern-orthodox-elders","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10260,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10258\/revisions\/10260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}