UPON PERFECT CONTENTMENT IN THE PRIVATION OF ALL CONTENT.
It is true that the devout life, which is nothing but an intense and fervent love of God, is an angelic life and full of contentment and of extraordinary consolation. It is, however, also true that those who submit themselves to the discipline of God, even while experiencing the sweetness of this divine love, must prepare their soul for temptation. The path which leads to the Land of Promise is beset with difficulties—dryness, sadness, desolation, and faint-hearted fears—and would end in bewildering discouragement, did not Faith and Hope, like Joshua and Caleb, show us the fair fruits of this much to be desired country, and thus animate us to perseverance.
But He who brings light out of darkness, and roses out of thorns, who helps us in all our tribulations, and performs wonders in heaven and earth, makes the happy souls whom He leads through His will to His glory to find perfect content in the loss of all content, both corporal and spiritual when once they recognize that it is the will of God that they should go to Him by the way of darkness, perplexity, crosses, and anguish.
In saying this I am putting into my own words the thoughts of our Blessed Father as expressed in the eleventh chapter of the sixth book of his Treatise on the Love of God.