"If all were perfect," says the "Imitation," "what, then, should we have to suffer from others for God's sake?"
It is not forbidden us to seek consolation. But from whom? Is it from those discontented spirits whose ears are like public sewers, the receptacle of every filth and dirt? They increase our pain by pouring the poison of their own discontent instead of the oil of the Good Samaritan. They will take our disease and give us theirs, and, like Samson's foxes, spread destruction around by repeating what we said to them. May God preserve us from this misfortune! If we cannot carry our burden alone, and if we find it no relief to lay our griefs in the Sacred Heart of Jesus, let us go to him whom the rule appoints to be our friend and consoler, our confidant and director, and who, as St. Augustine relates of St. Monica, after having listened to us with patience, charity, and compassion, after having at first appeared to share our sentiments, will sweeten and explain all with prudence, will lift up and encourage our oppressed heart, and by his counsel and prayers will restore us to peace and charity.
RECALL the words of our Lord to Blessed Margaret Mary: "With the intention of perfecting thee by patience I will increase thy sensibility and repugnance, so that thou wilt find occasions of humiliation and suffering even in the smallest and most indifferent things."
What would be considered, when we were in the world, as the prick of a needle, we look upon in religion as the blow of a sword. What we looked upon in our own house as light as a feather, becomes in community life as heavy as a rock. An insignificant word becomes an outrage, and a little matter which formerly would escape our notice now upsets us, and even deprives us of sleep and appetite. Is not this increase of sensibility and repugnance found in the religious state only to form in us the image of our crucified Lord? If Christ alone has suffered interiorly more than all the Saints and Martyrs together, was it not because of this extreme repugnance of His soul, which multiplied to infinity for Him the bitterness of the affronts and the rigour of His torments? Religious may expect for a certainty that, like their Divine Master, there are reserved for them moments of complete abandonment, those agonies intended for the souls of the elect, in which Nature seems on the point of succumbing. No consolation from their families, which they have quitted; nor from their companions, who are busy in their various employments; nor from their Superiors, who do not understand the excess of their grief, and whose words by Divine permission produce no effect.