Thus souls abandoned to God’s will take no heed of their infirmities, except those of a nature sufficiently evident and grave to require care and treatment. The languor and impotence of faithful souls are but illusions and semblances which they must courageously face. God sends and permits them to exercise their faith and self-abandonment, and in these virtues lies the soul’s true remedy. She must go on generously, utterly ignoring her infirmities, accepting all that comes to her to do or suffer in the order of God, never hesitating to treat her body as we do those beasts of burden only destined to spend their lives going hither and thither at our will. This treatment is more efficacious than all that delicate care which only weakens the vigor of the mind. This strength of purpose has an indescribable virtue and power to sustain a feeble body; and a year of this noble and generous life is worth a century of selfish fears and care.
We must endeavor to habitually maintain an air of childlike gentleness and good-will. Ah! what can we fear from this divine fortune? Guided, sustained, and protected by the Providence of God, the whole exterior conduct of His children should be nothing less than heroic. The alarming objects which oppose their progress are naught in themselves: they are only sent to embellish their lives by still more glorious actions. They entangle them in embarrassments of every kind, whence human prudence can see no issue, and, feeling its weakness, stops short, confounded. Then does the divine fortune gloriously manifest what it is for souls who wholly trust therein. It extricates them more marvellously than the writers of fiction with unrestrained imagination in the leisure and privacy of their study unraveled the intrigues and perils of their imaginary heroes, bringing them invariably to a happy end. More admirably still does it guide them safely through the perils of death, the snares of demons, the terrors of temptation, the fears of hell. It elevates these souls to heaven, and they are all the real subject of those mystic histories more beautiful and curious than any ever invented by the crude imagination of man.
Then onward, my soul, through perils and fears, guided, directed, and sustained by the invisible, all-powerful, unerring Hand of divine Providence. Let us go on fearlessly in joy and peace to the end, turning obstacles into victories, remembering that it was to struggle and conquer that we enrolled ourselves under His banner. Exivit vincens ut vinceret, and every step under His guidance is a victory. The book of souls lies open before the Holy Spirit, and their history is still written, for holy souls will furnish material for its pages to the end of the world. This history is but the relation of God’s operations and designs upon man, and it depends upon ourselves whether we shall appear in its pages and continue its narration by uniting our sufferings and actions to His divine will.
No; let nothing we have to do or suffer alarm us: it can cause us no loss; it is only sent us that we may furnish material for that holy history, which is increasing day by day.
[CHAPTER IX.]
Love holds the Place of All Things to Souls who walk in the Way of Abandonment.
God, while He despoils a soul who wholly abandons herself to Him, gives her something which takes the place of all things—of light, of strength, of life, of wisdom. This gift is His love. Divine love is like a supernatural instinct in these souls.
Everything in nature has that which is suited to its kind; each flower has its peculiar charm, each animal its instinct, and each creature its perfection. And so it is in the different states of grace; each has its special grace, and this is a recompense to every one whose good will brings him in harmony with the state in which Providence has placed him.
A soul becomes subject to the divine action the moment a good will is formed in her heart; and this action influences her according to the degree of her self-abandonment. The art of self-abandonment is simply the art of loving; divine love grants all things to the soul who refuses Him nothing. And as God’s love inspires the desires of a soul who lives for him, He can never refuse them; therefore, cannot love desire what it pleases?
The divine action only considers the good will of a soul; the capacity or incapacity of the other faculties neither attract nor repel it. If it find a soul good, pure, upright, simple, submissive, it is all it requires; it takes possession of this soul and of all her faculties, and so disposes all things for her good that she finds means of sanctification in everything. That which would give death to others, should it enter this soul will be harmless, for the antidote of her good will will arrest the effect of the poison. If she stray to the brink of the abyss, the divine action will withhold her from its depths, or if she fall it will rescue her. And indeed the faults of these souls are but faults of frailty and little perceptible; God’s love knows how to turn them to her advantage, and by secret and ineffable ways teaches her what she should say and do according to the circumstances in which she is placed.