How should a Christian treat his health and his illness, how to take a terrible diagnosis is to accept the inevitable end and the loss of loved ones - all these issues are topics of the letters of St. Theophan the Recluse to different persons. The saint, calling grief and illness a school of faith and patience, and a sign of God's love, consoled his spiritual children, he calls for patience in the heaven-sent test and inspires hope for martyrdom, because only through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God (Acts. 14, 22 )