Turning the devil's arrows back and imitating Job's endurance

The enemy prepared the bow of his plot, but he was prevented from releasing the arrow. Or rather, he did release it, but it has been turned back upon his own head. He himself now tastes those bitter tears he had prepared for us. So let us, brothers and sisters, make the wound heavier for the hostile one; let us increase his grief. How this is to be done, I will tell you, and you will carry it out. There are some who were snatched away from the fire's power by the Creator, and who have no remaining means of livelihood left to them, but escaped the danger with only soul and body. Let all of us, then, who have remained untouched by the experience of hardships, set before them our own abundance as a common store. Let us embrace the brothers and sisters who barely survived, and let each of us say to each of them: 'He was dead, and has come back to life; he was lost, and has been found' (Luke 15:24). And let us cover the body that belongs to our own kin. Let us oppose the hostile one's assaults with our own consolation, so that even when he harms us he may seem to have harmed nothing great, and when he makes war he may show no one defeated, and when he strips away the abundance of our brothers and sisters he may be shown defeated by our generosity.

But you who escaped the danger, brothers and sisters, do not be overly distressed by the evils that have happened, and do not let your minds be shaken. Instead, shake off the mist of grief and strengthen your souls with more courageous reasoning, and make what has happened an occasion for crowns. For if you remain unshaken, you will be shown more approved in faith, shining forth from the fire like noble gold, and you will increase the shame of the hostile one all the more, since he could not move even a tear from you through the things he plotted. Remind yourselves of Job's endurance. Say to yourselves what he said: 'The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; as it seemed good to the Lord, so it has happened' (Job 1:21). And let no one be persuaded by what he has suffered to reason and say that no providence orders our affairs, and let no one accuse the stewardship and judgment of the Master. Instead, let him look to that athlete and make him his counselor toward what is better. Let him reckon up all the contests in order, in which that man excelled, and how many arrows he was struck with by the devil without receiving a mortal wound. For the devil stripped away his prosperity in his household, but he planned to bury him under the successive reports of evils. For while the first messenger was still announcing one disaster, another messenger came, bringing the gloom of worse events. The terrors were joined one to another, and the disasters rivaled the onrush of waves; before the first tear had ceased, the occasion for another was brought forward. But the righteous man stood like a breakwater, receiving the assaults of the storm, turning the force of the waves into foam, and he sent forth the grateful voice to the Master: 'The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; as it seemed good to the Lord, so it has happened' (Job 1:21). And he considered none of the things that happened worthy of tears. But when someone came announcing that a violent wind had struck the chamber of gladness while his sons and daughters were feasting, then alone he tore his garment, showing the sympathy of nature and testifying by what he did that he was a tenderly loving father.