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Hi Subscriber,
This week we are continuing Saint Francis’ Treatise on the Love of God with the book 9, chapter 3 “Of The Union Of Our Will To The Divine Good-Pleasure In Spiritual Afflictions, By Resignation.”
The
love of the cross makes us undertake voluntary afflictions, as for
example, fasting, watching, hair-shirts and other macerations of the
flesh, and makes us renounce pleasures, honours and riches: and the love
in these exercises is very delightful to the beloved.
Yet it is still more so
when we receive sweetly and contentedly pains, torments and
tribulations, by reason of the Divine will which sends us them. But love
is then at its height when we not only receive afflictions with
patience and sweetness, but cherish, love, and embrace them for the sake
of the Divine good-pleasure, whence they proceed.
Now of all the efforts of
perfect love, that which is made by acquiescence of spirit in spiritual
tribulations, is doubtless the purest and noblest.
The Blessed (S.) Angela of
Foligno makes an admirable description of the interior pangs which she
sometimes felt, saying that her soul was tortured like to a man who
being tied hand and foot, should be hung by the neck without being
strangled, and should hang in this state betwixt life and death, without
hope of help, and unable to support himself by his feet or assist
himself with his hands, or to cry out, or even to sigh or moan.
It is thus, Theotimus: the
soul is sometimes so overcharged with interior afflictions, that all
her faculties and powers are oppressed by the privation of all that
might relieve her, and by the apprehension and feeling of all that can
be grievous to her. So that in imitation of her Saviour she begins to be
troubled, to fear, and to be dismayed, and at length to sadden with a
sadness like to that of the dying. Whence she may rightly say: My soul
is sorrowful even unto death; and with the consent of her whole
interior, she desires, petitions, supplicates, that, if it be possible,
this chalice may pass, having nothing left her save the very supreme
point of her spirit, which cleaving hard to the divine will and
good-pleasure, says in a most sincere submission: O eternal Father, Ah!
not mine but thy will be done.
And the main point is that
the soul makes this resignation amidst such a world of troubles,
contradictions, repugnances that she hardly even perceives that she
makes it; at least it seems done so coldly as not to be done from her
heart nor properly, since what then goes on for the divine good-pleasure
is not only done without delight and contentment, but even against the
pleasure and liking of all the rest of the heart, which is permitted by
love to bemoan itself (if only for the reason that it may not bemoan
itself) and to sigh out all the lamentations of Job and Jeremias, yet
with the condition that a sacred peace be still preserved in the depths
of the heart, in the highest and most delicate point of the spirit.
But this submissive peace
is not tender or sweet, it is scarcely sensible, though sincere, strong,
unchangeable and full of love, and it seems to have betaken itself to
the very end of the spirit as into the donjon-keep of the fort, where it
remains in its high courage, though all the rest be taken and oppressed
with sorrow: and in this case, the more love is deprived of all helps,
and cut off from the aid of the powers and faculties of the soul, the
more it is to be esteemed for preserving its fidelity so constantly.
This union or conformity
with the divine good-pleasure is made either by holy Resignation or by
most holy Indifference. Now resignation is practised with a certain
effort of submission: one would willingly live instead of dying, yet
since it is God’s pleasure that die we must, we yield to it. We would
willingly live, if it pleased God, yea, further, we wish that it was his
pleasure to let us live: we die submissively, yet more willingly would
we live; we depart with a reasonably good will, yet we have a still
stronger inclination to stay. Job in his afflictions made the act of
resignation: If we have received good things at the hand of God, said
he, why should we not receive the evil,(1) why not sustain the pains and
toils he sends us? Mark, Theotimus, how he speaks of sustaining,
supporting, enduring; As it hath pleased the Lord so is it done: blessed
be the name of the Lord.(2) These are words of resignation and
acceptance, by way of suffering and patience.
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