“You have become imitators of the Lord,” says the Apostle, “by receiving the word amidst much oppression, with the joy of the Holy Spirit.” Oppression in what pertains to the body, but joy in the spirit. You wonder, perhaps, how that can be. Well, what happened was distressing for you, but not so what came of it: the Holy Spirit does not allow it to be. On the one hand, you cannot be joyful while suffering for your sins; but on the other, you can find joy even in being scourged, when you suffer for Christ.
For that is how the joy of the Spirit shows itself: it brings gladness in place of what seemed like affliction. They have oppressed you, he says, and persecuted you, but the Spirit has not forsaken you all the while. Just as the three young men were refreshed in the fiery furnace, so it has been with you in your oppression. Whereas it is not in the nature of fire to refresh, but of the revivifying Spirit, it is likewise not in the nature of oppression to beget joy and gladness: that comes of suffering for Christ, and of the revivifying Spirit bringing relief even through the furnace of trials and temptations …
On the other hand, let no one pondering all this slacken off, on learning that everything can be put right in a short while. For the future is always unclear, and the day of the Lord is like a thief that comes upon us suddenly as we sleep. But if we are not asleep, it will not come upon us like a thief, or take us all unaware. For if we stay awake and keep watch, it will arrive not like a thief, but like a royal messenger calling us to the good things prepared for us.
St. John Chrysostom