The practice of the love of Jesus Christ - 025

XXV.-” CHARITY IS PATIENT.”-THE SOUL THAT LOVES JESUS CHRIST LOVES TO SUFFER

I. Let us be convinced that in this valley of tears true peace of heart cannot be found except by him who endures and lovingly embraces sufferings to please Almighty God: this is the consequence of that corruption in which all are placed through the infection of sin. The condition of the Saints on earth is to suffer and to love; the condition of the Saints in Heaven is to enjoy and to love. Father Paul Segneri the Younger, in a letter which he wrote one of his penitents to encourage her to suffer, gave her the counsel to keep these words inscribed at the foot of her Crucifix: Tis thus one loves! It is not simply by suffering but by desiring to suffer for the love of Jesus Christ that a soul gives the surest signs of really loving Him. And what greater acquisition, said St. Teresa, can we possibly make than to have some token of gratifying Almighty God? Alas, how ready are most men to take alarm at the bare mention of crosses, of humiliations, and afflictions! Nevertheless there are many souls who find all their delight in suffering, and who would be quite disconsolate did they pass their time on this earth without suffering. The sight of Jesus crucified, said a devout person, renders the cross so lovely to me that it seems to me I could never be happy without suffering; the love of Jesus Christ is sufficient for me in all circumstances. Jesus advises everyone who would follow Him to take up and carry his cross: Let him take up his cross and follow me-(Luke ix. 23). But we must take it up and carry it, not by constraint and against our will, but with humility, patience, and love.

II. Oh, how acceptable to God is he that humbly and patiently embraces the crosses He sends him! St. Ignatius of Loyola said: “There is no wood so apt to enkindle and maintain love towards God as the wood of the cross”; that is, to love Him in the midst of sufferings. One day St. Gertrude asked our Lord what she could offer Him most acceptable, and He replied: “My child, thou canst do nothing more gratifying to Me than to submit patiently to all the tribulations that befall thee.” Wherefore the great servant of God, Sister Victoria Angelini, affirmed that one day of crucifixion was worth a hundred years of all other spiritual exercises. And the Blessed John of Avila said: “One Blessed be God! in ill success is worth more than a thousand thanksgivings in prosperity.” Alas, how little men know of the inestimable value of affliction endured for God! The Blessed Angela of Foligno said that “if we knew the just value of suffering for God, it would, become an object of plunder”; which is as much as to say that each one would seek an opportunity of robbing his neighbour of the occasions of suffering. For this reason St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi, well aware as she was of the merit of sufferings, sighed to have her life prolonged rather than to die and go to Heaven, “because,” said she, “in Heaven one can suffer no more.”