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Seventeenth Saturday after Pentecost
Seventeenth Saturday after Pentecost. God Recompenses Mortified Souls.
Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation.
We will meditate tomorrow : 1st, on the happiness with which God recompenses mortified souls here below ; 2nd, on the unhappiness to which He abandons unmortified souls. We will derive from these reflections the resolution : 1st, to be generous in the service of God, and cheer fully to make all the sacrifices which present themselves to us ; 2nd, for the love of God frequently to impose voluntary sacrifices on ourselves, even if they should consist of nothing but a desire, a look, or something agreeable to the senses. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of the Apostle : "I exceedingly abound with joy in all our tribulations" (II. Cor. vii. 4).
Meditation for the Morning.
Let us adore the infinite goodness of Jesus Christ, who at the same time that He imposes upon us the law of mortification takes from it all that is painful to nature by declaring to us that therein consists our true happiness. My law is a yoke, He says, but I render it sweet to those who will wear it ; it is a burden, but I make it light to those who will bear it (Matt. xi. 30). Let us thank Him for willing thus to temper by the unction of His grace the hardness of the cross, and to share the burden with us that He may lighten it.
With what Happiness God Recompenses Here Below Mortified Souls.
When God beholds in His service generous souls who are not afraid of making sacrifices to Him, He does not allow Himself to be vanquished in generosity ; He delights to shed upon them His consolations and His delights ; He renders to them in proportion to what they give Him, and there is, as it were, a holy emulation of love be tween Him and them. Such great hearts as these and such true Christians are delighted to find opportunities for suffering and doing violence to themselves. Far from allowing any such opportunities to escape them, however opposed they may be to their temperament, they seize them joyfully, as being one of the greatest happinesses of life, and they never say : " It is not an obligation incumbent on me ; I shall meet with enough opportunities for mortifying myself ; it shall be for another time." If any one mortifies them, they are not troubled ; they do not feel the least resentment, and they act always with the same cordiality towards them. It never occurs to them to complain of difficulties accompanying virtue, nor to cry down exercises of piety under the pretence that they are painful. Always ready to renounce every pleasure, even such as are permitted, which they might enjoy in this life, they keep themselves continually at a distance from the voluptuousness of the world, the satisfaction of the flesh, from all kinds of luxuries and superfluities. Lastly, knowing that the body is a slave which, when it is well fed, revolts against its master, they weaken it, they keep it in subjection ; they never dwell on the pleasure to be found in the use of creatures, and endeavor to conform themselves in everything to Jesus crucified. But, on the other hand, God compensates them magnificently for these privations. Let us believe what the great Apostle says when he cries out : "Blessed be the God and Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulations. ... I exceedingly abound with joy in all our tribulations. God comforteth the humble" (II. Cor. i. 3, 4; vii. 4, 6). Let us believe St. Francis Xavier ; great sufferings were shown to him in the career on which he was about to enter ; he asks for still more. At that very moment he is recompensed by an ocean of joy and happiness which he cannot contain, and which obliges him to cry out, "Enough, O Lord, enough!" And we also, let us have the courage to renounce self-will in order to infuse order into the employment of our time, to sacrifice even only a desire, a look, a pleasure of the senses, a word, and we shall feel what joy and happiness there is in doing something for God, and grace entering into our soul will make us repeat the words of St. Aloysius, that a little sacrifice made for God procures a thousand times more happiness for the soul than the thing sacrificed would have done.
To what Unhappiness God Abandons Unmortified Souls.
How unhappy such souls are ! For them there is no unction and grace in the service of God ; it is nothing but disgust and tepidity ; piety is insipid, devotion has no attractions. We see others advance and we remain behind, because we will not detach ourselves as they do. Prayer is nothing but a weariness, because neither the heart, which is a slave to its attachments, nor the mind, which is habitually dissipated, is in a proper state for the reception of celestial communications ; and where the generous soul complains that the hours are too short, the unmortified soul finds them always too long. What is, how ever, the most pitiable is, that often a trifle, a nothing, stops it ; it is only a thread, but as long as the thread is not broken, the soul which it keeps back will never fly into the bosom of God, where repose and happiness are found ; it will do nothing but turn round and round in the same labyrinth, nothing but painfully torment itself around that which holds it back. Is not this our history ? Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.
Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.
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