How Profitable and Perfect a Thing It Would Be to Apply Meditation to This Exercise of Conformity to the Will of God; and How We Should Descend to Particulars Until We Reach the Third Degree of Conformity

JOHN RUYSBROECK, a most learned and spiritual man, relates of a holy virgin that, giving an account of her prayer to her confessor and spiritual father, who must have been a great servant of God and far advanced in prayer, and seeking direction from him, she told him that her exercise in prayer was on the life and Passion of Christ our Redeemer, and that what she drew from thence was a knowledge of herself and of her vices and passions, and grief and compassion for the pains and afflictions of Christ. The confessor said that that was good, but that without much virtue one could elicit a sentiment of tender compassion for the Passion of Christ, as here on earth for mere love and natural affection for a friend one may elicit compassion for his afflictions. The virgin asked: “Would it be a true devotion for a person every day to bewail her sins?” He answered: “That is good too, but not the most excellent of all, since evil is a thing naturally to grieve over.” She asked again: “Would it be true devotion to think of the pains of hell and the glory of the blessed?” He answered: “That is not the most sublime either, since Nature herself abhors and refuses what gives pain and loves and seeks after what may afford happiness and glory; thus, if they were to paint a town full of places of pleasure and recreation, Nature would desire it.” Hereupon the holy virgin was much distressed and mournful for not knowing to what subject to apply her prayer, the better to please God. A little way from that she perceived a very beautiful child, to whom she told her distress and inconsolable situation. The child told her not to talk that way, because he himself could and would console her. ‘Go,” he said, “to thy spiritual father and say to him that true devotion consists in abnegation and contempt of oneself and entire resignation into the hands of God, as well in adversity as in prosperity, uniting oneself firmly to God by love and conforming entirely one’s own will to His will.” She was much cheered and told this to her spiritual father, who replied: “There is the point, and to that should meditation be applied, since therein consists perfect charity and love of God, and consequently our advancement and perfection.”

Of another holy woman it is told that she was taught by God, in reciting the Our Father to dwell much on these words, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And of the holy virgin, Gertrude, it is related that, inspired by God, she once repeated three hundred and sixty-five times those words of Christ, Not my will, but thine be done—Non quod ego volo, sed quod tu (Luke xxii. 42), and she understood that thereby she had greatly pleased God. Let us, then, imitate these examples and apply thereto our meditation and dwell much on this exercise.

That we may be able to do this better and to greater advantages, it is necessary to observe and presuppose two things. The first is that the need of this exercise is principally for the time of adversities, when difficulties come in our way, and things trying to our flesh. It is for these occasions that virtue is most necessary, and then is better seen the love that each one has for God. As in time of peace the king shows his good will to his soldiers by the bounties that he bestows on them, and they in time of war show the love and regard they have for him by fighting and dying in his cause; so in time of consolation and favor the King of heaven gives us marks of the good will He bears us, and we in tribulation show our devotedness to Him more than in the time of prosperity and consolation. Father Master Avila well says that to give thanks to God in time of consolation is the part of all; but to give thanks in time of tribulations and adversities is proper to the good and the perfect; and so it is a music that sounds very sweet and pleasant in the ears of God. Better is one “Thanks be to God!” he says, in adversities than “Blessed be God!” a thousand times repeated in time of prosperity. And so Holy Writ compares the just man to a certain precious stone of deep red color like a ruby, and of great brilliance: gemmula carbunculi in ornamento auri (Ecclus. xxxli 7); for, as this stone shines brighter in the night than in the day, so the just man and true servant of God is more brilliant and shows better what he is in tribulations and troubles than in prosperity. This is what Holy Writ praises so much in holy Toby, for that when the Lord permitted that after so many troubles he should also lose his eyesight, he did not on that account fall into any sullen discontent with God nor abate one jot of the fidelity and obedience that he paid Him before, but stood his ground unflinchingly, rendering thanks to God all the days of his life, as well for his blindness as for his eyesight, as also did holy Job in his troubles (Tob. ii. 14; Job i. 21). This, says St.

Augustine, is what we should endeavor to imitate, being the same in adversity as in prosperity and remaining as cheerful and unruffled. As the hand is the same when you close your fist as when you hold your fingers open, so the servant of God in the interior of his soul ought to remain the same, although on the exterior and outside he seems oppressed and pained. So they say of Socrates that no one ever saw him unusually joyful or unusually sad; throughout so many varying phases of fortune he remained always equable even to the end of his life. Will it be too much for us, Christians and religious, to arrive at a perfection which this gentile attained?

The second thing necessary to observe is that it is not enough for us to have in general this conformity to the will of God, for what is in general is easy. Who is there that will not say that he wishes the will of God to be accomplished in him in all things? Bad and good, all say every day in the Pater Noster: Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. More is necessary than that; it is necessary to break the matter up, descending in particular to those things which seem capable of giving us some pain if they were to occur. And we must not stop until we overcome and smooth down all these difficulties, so that there shall not remain, as they say, so much as a spearman standing; finally, until there is nothing left to stand in the way of our union and conformity in all things to the will of God, but we can face any obstacle that may offer.

We must not rest content with this, but aim at passing on and not stopping until we find in ourselves a disposition to give a hearty, glad, and joyous welcome to the accomplishment of God’s will in us, even though it be with troubles, pains, and affronts; and this is the third degree of conformity. But even in this there are different degrees, one above another, which may be reduced to three principal degrees in the way in which the saints speak of the virtue of patience. The first is when on the occurrence of painful events the man does not desire them nor love them, but rather shuns them; still he would rather suffer them than commit any sin to avoid them. This is the lowest degree and is matter of precept. Thus, though the man feels pain, grief, and sadness at the evils that befall him, and though the sick-person groans and cries out at the vehemence of his pains, and though the bereaved survivor weeps over the death of the members of his family, yet for all that he holds steadily to his conformity with the will of God.

The second degree is when, though the man does not desire the evils that befall him nor choose them, still, when they come, he accepts them and suffers with a good grace because such is the will and good pleasure of God. What this degree adds to the first is a certain good will and a certain love of the pain for God’s sake and a desire to suffer it, not only so long as there is an obligation under precept to suffer it, but further so long as the suffering of it will be agreeable to God. The first degree takes things with patience; the second, beyond that, takes them with promptitude and readiness.

The third degree is when the servant of God, for the great love that he bears to the Lord, not only suffers and accepts with a good grace the pains and afflictions that are sent him, but desires them and rejoices much in them, such being the will of God, as St. Luke says of the apostles when they had been scourged and exposed to public infamy: They went away rejoicing from the sight of the council, because they had been counted worthy to suffer ignominy for the name of Jesus (Acts v. 41). And St. Paul: J am filled with consolation, I superabound in joy in all our tribulation (II Cor. vii. 4). And again, writing to the Hebrews, he praises them: Ye have undergone with joy the plundering of your goods, knowing that ye have a better and abiding estate (Heb. x. 34). This is what we should aim at coming to with the grace of the Lord, that we should bear with joy and gladness all the tribulations and adversities that befall us, as St. James tells us in his canonical epistle: Count at all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into various trials (James i. 2). The will and good pleasure of God should be to us a thing so pleasant and sweet, that with this sauce we are able to sweeten all the bitterness that comes upon us; all the troubles and disappointments of life become to us sweet and savory, such being the will and good pleasure of God. And this is what St. Gregory says: “When a soul is strongly bent on God, whatever bitterness she meets with in this life she counts for sweetness; all affliction she reckons to be rest; she desires to die in order to have a fuller enjoyment of life.”

St. Catherine of Siena, in a dialogue which she wrote on the consummation of Christian perfection, says that among other things which her sweet Spouse Jesus Christ taught her there was this, that everyone should make to himself a sort of chamber, arched over with a strong arch, which is the divine will, and shut himself up; and stay there perpetually and never stir from thence so much as eye or foot or hand, but be ever sheltered therein like the bee when she is in her hive or the pearl in its shell. Though at the beginning, perhaps, this chamber may appear strait and narrow, she would afterwards find it ample and spacious, and without going out of it would pass to the everlasting dwellings (Luke xvi. 12), and would gain in a short time what without it she could not have gained in a long period. Let us, then, do this and let it be our continual exercise. My beloved to me, and I to him (Cant. ii. 16). In these two phrases there is exercise for a whole lifetime, and so we should keep them ever in our mouth and in our heart.