“How pitiful is a life without pain”

This was the saying of St. Augustine: the Saints most closely united to Our Lord have, from atop the mountain of love, broader horizons than we do. They know what eternity is and how worthwhile it is to suffer for love of God and for the salvation of our soul, destined for eternal happiness. All the Saints were not only patient and resigned in their sufferings, but also passionate about the cross: “Let me suffer or let me die!” exclaims St. Teresa. “To suffer and to be despised for Thee!” said St. John of the Cross.

Does the world understand this language? Do our delicacy and sensuality not find these expressions exaggerated? Ah! We are still too obtuse! The Cross of Jesus Christ scandalizes us as it scandalized the pagans at the time of St. Paul.

St. Augustine, after so many disastrous mistakes in his search for happiness, finally found it in the Cross of Jesus Christ. And he could say: “How pitiful is a life without pain!” Yes, because without suffering, without the cross, there are no merits, no solid virtues and no guaranteed salvation. Since our Divine Master redeemed us by the Cross, there can be no salvation outside the Cross! “In Cruce salus!” And if it is so necessary to suffer, how pitiful is a life without pain!

Bread without sugar and sugar without bread

In their devotions, many people seek the consolations of God more than the God of consolations, says the author of the Imitation of Christ. Like children who do not seek substantial food, contenting themselves with delicacies, candies and sweets, certain souls desire the sensation of fervour, the sweetness of prayer. If God withdraws their consolations, they complain, become discouraged and murmur. And it is not uncommon for them to even abandon their exercises of piety.

Divine love brings infinite sweetness, and fills and the heart to overflowing, but not always with joys and consolations. Jesus Christ is a crucified Spouse. And no one can truly love Him without the cross. The bread of sorrow – panem doloris – of which the Psalmist speaks, must be the preferred food of souls who aspire to Calvary. St. Catherine of Siena experienced such dryness in her devotion that she thought herself abandoned by God. For many years, St. Therese experienced the most excruciating spiritual aridity. And these Saints were two seraphic souls!

Many souls prefer, as St. Francis de Sales says, the sugar-free bread of a very solid devotion and prove through sacrifice their true love for Jesus Christ, even without consolations. Others want only the sugar of consolations and reject the bread of sacrifice, the substantial bread of sorrow.

O my Jesus, I prefer your bread without sugar to your sugar without bread!

A smile amidst the sorrow

To accept suffering without complaint is virtue, and solid virtue. To accept it with a smile is heroism. Do you know the classic smile of St. Therese of the Child Jesus? It is a smile among roses, but roses with hard, piercing thorns. When suffering comes, one must readily accept it, as if receiving a beloved guest. This is what the Angel of Carmel did.

A novice desired proof of the Saint’s heroic virtue. “Two months before her death,” says the young sister, “I went to visit Sister Therese and, as I had heard many eulogies of her patience, I felt inspired to observe her in a moment of crisis. And I immediately saw her face transformed with joy and a heavenly smile on her lips. Asking her the reason for that change, she answered: ‘That is why I experience strong pain; I must love suffering and always greet it with a pleasant expression.’”

It is very difficult to smile when sister pain pays a visit to our weakness. It is difficult, but not impossible. We must welcome her. It is necessary to do so. Our Lord sent her. She is a messenger from Heaven. It is God’s will. If, like St. Therese, we cannot receive her with a sweet and kind smile, let us be courteous. She is good, she came from Heaven, she came to heal us. May sister pain enter unhindered and not notice our rudeness if, by chance, we receive her without a kind gesture and a pleasant smile!

Pass underneath!

It is once again the Angel of Carmel who will give us a lesson for the challenges of life. There are certain souls who find everything difficult. If an obstacle arises, they become discouraged, they try to overcome without success, they want to pass over difficulties and they find it impossible… And how they suffer!

During a grave temptation and serious impasse in the spiritual life, a novice said to St. Therese: “I cannot pass over this obstacle!” The Saint replied: “Why must you try to pass over it? Pass underneath! It is fitting for great souls to soar above the clouds, while the thunder rumbles below and the storm rages. As for us, let us be content to pass underneath, with humility and patience. In this regard, I remember something that happened to me as a child: one day there was a horse at the entrance of the garden, blocking the passage. While the onlookers, watching over me, were debating how to lead the animal away, I passed easily underneath it. See how good it is to be little, and for each of us to remain within our little size.”

With patience and humility, always remain very small, like little children, and when some horse of life’s difficulties threatens you or blocks the door of your peace of soul, like little Therese, pass quickly underneath!

The beautiful crown of the heroes and martyrs of God’s will

We would like to have the glory of martyrdom. What envy we feel in seeing the Christian heroes in the amphitheatre arena, in the prisons, on the racks and crosses! And we can have the glory of martyrdom, a martyrdom no less glorious than that of those who shed their blood for Christ’s sake.

St. Augustine says that martyrdom consists not in the pain suffered, but in the cause or the end for which one dies. And the Angelic Doctor teaches that one can be a true martyr by dying in the exercise of a virtuous act. To accept what Heaven sends us of suffering and of crosses, as well as – and above all – death, to please God and to conform to His most holy will, is therefore martyrdom and has the merit of martyrdom. And whoever does this, says St. Alphonsus authoritatively, even if he does not die at the hands of the executioner, gains the merit of martyrdom.

The reliable voices of three Doctors of the Church affirm that we can have the glory of martyrdom without shedding our blood, merely by the heroic acceptance of God’s will.

Do our lives not present us with many occasions in which to heroically exercise the virtue of patience? And what about the monotonous, difficult and almost unbearable duty we must fulfil each day? And the sufferings caused by those who trouble us? By an excruciating, prolonged and perhaps incurable disease? Do we not want the glory of the martyrs? Why do we not, then, take advantage of the martyrdom which Our Lord sends us? What a beautiful crown the King of Martyrs reserves for the heroes and martyrs of God’s most holy will!

Useless…

“I’m useless!” moans someone on his sickbed, reduced to a painful inaction. He wants to work, he wants to fight as he formerly did, and yet he finds himself bound, hands and feet, to a bed, trapped in the monotony of a sick man’s room. I am useless!

What a crucifying thought, for example, for an apostle’s heart, thirsting to fight for the salvation of souls, as it contemplates the ripe harvest and… the lack of labourers.

Ah! Let us not say “I am useless” when it is God’s will that we suffer. Perhaps all our work was useless; without interior life, without purity of intention, God does not need us. We are mere instruments in His divine hands. And an instrument can be robust or sickly, large or small. The salvation of souls is a divine work. On his bed of sorrows, the apostle can save more souls through patience than through the most brilliant preaching.

“What glorifies God,” says St. Alphonsus, “is not our works, but our resignation and the conformity of our will to the will of God.” The apostolate of suffering, because it is the most hidden and painful, is also the most effective. St. Therese of the Child Jesus wrote to a missionary: “My brother, God wants to establish His Kingdom in souls much more through suffering and persecution than through brilliant preaching.”

You are not useless on the cross of infirmity. Oh, no, good apostle! You are establishing the Kingdom of God in souls! […]

God did not want it!

God wants just one thing from us: the fulfilment of His most holy will. The rest is incidental and even useless and dangerous for our salvation. The duty fulfilled also assures us of the fulfilment of God’s will. When one has done what one must, done what one could, done what God willed, one can be tranquil and abandon oneself entirely into the hands of Divine Providence.

Success? Victory? Achievement? They matter little! God wants them? “Te Deum laudamus!” Failures, frustrations, humiliations? Has God allowed them? Praise be to God! Are we sure that we have done our duty and our conscience is at peace? All is well. God did not want it!

Purity of intention is what counts in our works. Let us watch over our purity of intention and never be painfully surprised by the failures of our good works. Let us cling only to God’s will and remain indifferent to success or failure, to victory or defeat. Fr. Lehodey said: “We know that God wants this good work from us, but we do not know His ulterior intentions. Often, in order to exercise us in the virtue of holy indifference, God inspires in us very high designs, whose success, however, He does not will.”

Should we complain, lament, distrust in Providence? That would be pride and madness. God knows what He is doing! If failure has humiliated us and purified our intention, let us bless God! This work of zeal has perished for our own good! God did not want it!

 “Let Me plant the cross”

Our Lord wants to save us by the cross. I have said it many times and repeat it here. He seems to say to us, when He comes to us with the cross: “Dear soul, let Me plant my cross in your heart.” Let us be generous, then! He may plant it wherever and however He pleases, and set it firmly in place. May the storm of my ingratitude and the furious winds of temptation never uproot it!

Only Our Lord knows where He will plant His cross in the barren land of my heart. It is necessary to dig up the earth, and the shovels of trials, in the hands of good workers – the creatures who persecute and humiliate us – will dig the hole. Then the cross is raised. It is yet another suffering. When the cross is not on our shoulders, but penetrates an open wound and it bleeds, it is hard to bear, my God!… How many times, precisely when the earth of our heart has suffered so many blows, has been tilled and pounded by the labourers of sorrow, the heavy cross of Calvary arrives! Let us allow Our Lord to plant this blessed cross! We may die of pain, in a sad agony. It does not matter! We will rise again in love!

Blessed, a thousand times blessed is the soul who has understood the mystery of the cross! In the desert of this life, there is only one safe haven: it is the shade of the verdant tree of the cross. Let us not be afraid of the cross. Let us allow Our Lord to come, yes, let Him come when and with the cross He wishes.

And then He will say to us, full of love: “Let Me plant the cross!” Plant it, yes, my Jesus, in this desert of my ungrateful heart, right here in the centre, or rather, wherever You wish. But plant it well, because here there is a strong storm blowing! ◊

Taken from: BRANDÃO, Ascânio.
Breviário da confiança [Breviary of Confidence].
São Paulo: Ave-Maria, 1936, p.64-76