What role do tribulations play in faith?

The answer

Tribulations impel us to cry out to God and ask for our faith to be strengthened, as St. Ambrose says, “Christian faith is like a mustard seed, that at first sight appears to be small, trivial, and weak; it does not clearly manifest its true strength. Yet when various tribulations begin to attack it, its activity and strength become apparent, and [the Christian then] breathes out his fiery faith in the Lord, stirring up a kind of divine passion that inflames not only himself, but also everything around him.”⁷³

Cyprian the Martyr says, “Let not these things be offences 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 preceded, 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 recognised 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. The tree which is deeply founded in its root is not moved by the onset of winds … Thus, moreover, the Apostle Paul, after shipwrecks, after scourgings, after many and grievous tortures of the flesh and body, says that he is not grieved, but benefited by his adversity, in order that while he is sorely afflicted he might more truly be proved.”⁷⁴ “There ought to abide with us, dearest brother, an immoveable strength of faith; and against all the irruptions and onsets of the waves that roar against us, a steady and unshaken courage should plant itself as with the fortitude and mass of a resisting rock.”⁷⁵

Fr. Tadros Yacoub Malaty