[XXXII]
SECOND MEANS TO BEAR WITH OTHERS
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.
The solemn moment of agony with our Divine Saviour was that in which, abandoned, betrayed, and denied by His Apostles, and perceiving in His Father only an irritated face, He exclaimed, "My God! My God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?" Such will be for religious the last touch which will complete in them the resemblance of Jesus crucified, provided they will render themselves worthy of it.
When will be the time of this complete abandonment? How long will this agony be prolonged? This is a secret known only to God.
[XXXIII]
CONCLUSION
POVERTY, chastity, obedience, and charity—such are the virtues suitable and characteristic of the religious. In this little treatise we have endeavoured to trace the features of the last.
In every community we can distinguish two sorts of religious— those who mount and those who descend—those whose face is towards the path of perfection, and those who have turned their back to it. Perhaps amongst these latter some have only one more step to abandon it altogether. Now we mount or descend, proceed or retrace our steps, in proportion as we practise these four virtues or neglect them.