HIS GRATITUDE TO GOD FOR SPIRITUAL CONSOLATIONS.
In one of his letters written to a person both virtuous and honourable, in whom he had great confidence, he says: "If you only knew how God deals with my heart, you would thank Him for His goodness to me, and entreat Him to give me the spirit of counsel and of fortitude, so that I may rightly act upon the inspirations of wisdom and understanding which He communicates to me." He often expressed the same thought to me in different words. "Ah!" he would say, "how good must not the God of Israel be to such as are upright of heart, since He is so gracious to those even who have a heart like mine, miserable, heedless of His graces, and earth-bound! Oh! how sweet is His spirit to the souls that love Him and seek Him with all their might! Truly, His name is as balm, and it is no wonder that so many ardent spirits follow Him with enthusiastic devotion, eagerly and joyously hastening to Him, led by the sweetness of His attractions. Oh! what great things we are taught by the unction of divine goodness! Being at the same time illumined by so soft and calm a light that we can scarcely tell whether the sweetness is more grateful than the light, or the light than the sweetness! Truly, the breasts of the Spouse are better than wine, and sweeter than all the perfumes of Arabia.[1]
"Sometimes I tremble for fear that God may be giving me my Paradise in this world! I do not really know what adversity is; I have never looked poverty in the face; the pains which I have experienced have been mere scratches, just grazing the skin; the calumnies spoken against me are nothing but a gust of wind, and the remembrance of them dies away with the sound of the voice which utters them. It is not only that I am free from the ills of life, I am, as it were, choked with good things, both temporal and spiritual. Yet in the midst of all I remain ungrateful and insensible to His goodness. Oh! for pity's sake, help me sometimes to thank God, and to pray Him not to let me have all my reward at once!
"He, indeed, shows that He knows my weakness and my misery by treating me thus like a child, and feeding me with sweetmeats and milk, rather than with more solid food. But oh, when will He give me the grace, after having basked in the sunshine of His favours, to sigh and groan a little under the burden of His Cross, since to reign with Him, we must suffer with Him, and to live with Him, we must die together with Him? Assuredly we must either love or die, or rather we must die that we may love Him; that is to say, die to all other love to live only for His love, and live only for Him who died that we may live eternally in the embrace of His divine goodness."
[Footnote 1: Cantic. i. 1, 2.]
UPON THE SHEDDING OF TEARS.
Although he was himself very easily moved to tears, he did not set any specially high value on what is called the gift of tears, except when it proceeds, not from nature, but directly from the Father of light, who sends His rain upon the earth from the clouds. He told me once that, just as it would be contrary to physical laws for rain, in place of falling from heaven to earth, to rise from earth to heaven; so it was against all order that sensible devotion should produce that which is supernatural. For this would be for nature to produce grace. He compared tears shed, in moments of mental excitement, by persons gifted with a strong power of imagination, to hot rains which fall during the most sultry days of summer, and which scorch rather than refresh vegetation. But when supernatural devotion, seated in the higher powers of the soul, breaking down all restraining banks, spreads itself over the whole being of man, he compared the tears it causes him to shed to a mighty, irresistible and fertilising torrent, making glad the City of God. Tears of this sort, he thought much to be desired, seeing that they give great glory to God and profit to the soul. Of those who shed such tears, he said, the Gospel Beatitude speaks when it tells us that: Blessed are they that weep.[1]
In one of his letters he writes as follows: "I say nothing, my good daughter, about your imagining yourself hard of heart, because you have no tears to shed. No, my child, your heart has nothing to do with this. Your lack of tears proceeds not from any want of affectionate resolve to love, God, but from the absence of sensible devotion, which does not depend at all upon our heart, but upon our natural temperament, which we are unable to change. For just as in this world it is impossible for us to make rain to fall when we want it, or to stop it at our own good pleasure, so also it is not in our power to weep from a feeling of devotion when we want to do so, or, on the other hand, not to weep when carried away by our emotion. Our remaining unmoved at prayer and meditation proceeds, not from any fault of ours, but from the providence of God, who wishes us to travel by land, and often by desert land, rather than by water, and who wills to accustom us to labour and hardship in our spiritual life." On this same subject I once heard him make one of his delightful remarks: "What!" he cried, "are not dry sweetmeats quite as good as sweet drinks? Indeed they have one special advantage. You can carry them about with you in your pocket, whereas the sweet drink must be disposed of on the spot. It is childish to refuse to eat your food when none other is to be had, because it is quite dry. The sea is God's, for He made it, but His hands also laid the foundations of the dry land, that is to say, of the earth. We are land animals, not fish. One goes to heaven by land as easily as by water. God does not send the deluge every day. Great floods are not less to be feared than great droughts!"
[Footnote 1: Matt. v. 5.]