UPON DOING AND ENDURING.
His opinion was that one ounce of suffering was worth more than a pound of action; but then it must be of suffering sent by God, and not self-chosen. Indeed, to endure pain which is of our own choosing is rather to do than to suffer, and, speaking in general, our having chosen it spoils our good work, because self-love has insinuated itself into our motives. We wish to serve God in one way, while He desires to be served in another; we wish what He wishes, but not as He wishes it. We do not submit ourselves wholly and as we should do to His will.
A person who was very devout and who was accustomed to spend much time in mental prayer, being attacked with severe headache, was forbidden by her doctor to practise this devotion, as it increased her suffering and prevented her recovery. The patient much distressed at this prohibition wrote to consult our Blessed Father on the subject, and this is his reply:
"As regards meditation," he says, "the doctors are right. While you are so weak, you must abstain from it; but to make up you must double your ejaculatory prayers, and offer them all to God as an act of acquiescence in His good pleasure, which, though preventing you from meditating, in no way separates you from Himself, but, on the contrary, enables you to unite yourself more closely to Him by the practice of calm and holy resignation. What matters it how or by what means we are united to God? Truly, since we seek Him alone, and since we find Him no less in mortification than in prayer, especially when He visits us with sickness, the one ought to be as welcome to us as the other. Moreover, ejaculatory prayers and the silent lifting of the heart to God, are really a continued meditation, and the patient endurance of pain and distress is the worthiest offering we can possibly make to Him who saved us through suffering. Read also occasionally some good book that will fill up what is wanting to you of food for the spirit."