Of the Conformity That We Should Have to the Will of God in Times of Sickness

AS health is a gift of God, so also is sickness. God sends us sickness for our probation, amendment, and correction, and for many other good things and advantages that are apt to flow from it—as knowledge of our own weakness; dissipation of the illusions of our vanity; detachment from the things of earth and the appetites of sensuality; abatement of the impetuosity and strength of our greatest enemy, the flesh; a reminder that this is not our native city, but a sort of inn where we are in exile; and other like things. Wherefore the Wise Man says: A grave illness maketh the soul temperate and strong (Ecclus. xxxi. 2). Thus we ought to be as conformable to the will of God in sickness as in health, taking it as coming from the hand of God our Lord when He is pleased to send it. One of those ancient Fathers said to a disciple of his that was sick: “Son, grieve not over thy sickness, but rather render great thanks to God for it; for, if thou art iron, the fire will consume thy rust; and if thou art gold, thou wilt be proved in the fire. It is a great virtue and a great act of religion to render thanks to God in sickness.”

Of the blessed St. Clare, Surius relates in her Life that for twenty-eight years she was ill of grievous infirmities, and her patience was so great that in all that time they never noticed her complaining or murmuring at her great affliction, but rather she was continually giving thanks to the Lord. And in her last sickness, when she was so worn out that for seventeen days she was not able to eat a morsel, and her confessor Friar Reginald was consoling her and exhorting her to patience in such a long martyrdom, she answered: “From the time that I came to know the grace of my Lord Jesus Christ through His holy servant Francis, no sickness has been hard to me, no pain troublesome, and no penance severe.” Admirable also in this way and a very rare example, which should give much courage and consolation to the sick, is the life of St. Lidwina, virgin. For thirty-eight years she endured continual and most severe infirmities and pains; and for thirty years she was unable to rise from her poor bed or put her foot on the ground, and there the Lord did her very great favors.

But because certain particular reasons are apt to occur to us to hinder this indifference and conformity under color and appearance of greater good, we will proceed to reply to them and meet them. In the first place, one may say: “For myself I should not mind being sick any more than being in health, but what I do feel is seeming to be a burden to the order and giving trouble in the house.” To this I say that this is a rash judgment on superiors and on the community, condemning them of want of charity and want of conformity to the will of God. Your superiors also profess to aim at perfection and to take all things as coming from the hand of the Lord and to conform themselves therein to the divine will; and thus, if God wishes you to be sick and them to be busy waiting on you and comforting you, they also must wish the same; and as you bear the cross which God gives you, they also will take up with great conformity that which He wishes them to bear.

But you will say: “Herein I quite see the great charity that is practised in the Society; the only thing that troubles me is the good that I might be doing in studying, preaching, and hearing confessions, and the lapse of that through my being sick.” To this St. Augustine answers very well. He says that we should consider that we do not know whether it will be better to put into execution what we have a mind to or leave it undone; and so we are forced to plan and arrange things according to our capacity; and if afterwards we are able to carry them out as we had planned, we should not rejoice because that has been done which we thought of and desired, but because the Lord has been pleased to have it done so. And if what we thought and planned has not eventually been carried into effect, not on that account should we be troubled and lose our peace. “It is fairer,” St. Augustine says, “that we should follow His will than that He should follow ours’—Aequius est ut nos eius quam ut ille nostram sequatur voluntatem. And he concludes with an admirable sentence: “He is better at laying out and planning things who is disposed and prepared not to do what God would not have him do, than he who is all anxiety and desire to carry into act what he has thought of”—Nemo melius ordinat quod agat, nisi qui paratior est non agere quod divina potestate prohibetur quam cupidior agere quod humana cogitatione meditatur.

In this manner, then, and with this indifference we should plan and arrange what we have to do, being ever quite prepared to conform ourselves to the will of God if so it happens that our plans come not to effect. Thus we shall not be troubled or saddened when through sickness or any other like cause we have not been able to do what we intended and had ready planned out, even though the things intended were in themselves of great benefit to souls. Father Master Avila says very well, writing to a sick priest: “Do not reckon up what you would have done if you had been well, but how much you will please the Lord by acquiescing in being ill. If you seek, as I believe you do seek, purely the will of God, why should you mind being ill rather than well, since His will is all our good?”

St. Chrysostom says that holy Job merited and pleased God more in that saying: As it hath pleased the Lord, so hath it been done: may the name of the Lord be blessed (Job i. 21), conforming his will to those afflictions and leprosy that God sent him, than by any amount of almsdeeds and benefactions that he did while he was healthy and rich. In like manner you will please God more by conforming yourself to His will in your sickness than by all that you could have done in health. St. Bonaventure says the same: “There is more perfection in bearing with patience and conformity afflictions and adversities than in being hard at work on excellent good works’”—Perfectius est adversa tolerare patienter quam bonis operibus insudare. For God has no need of me nor of you to do the good that He wants done in His Church. J have said to the Lord, Thou art my God, Thou hast no need of my good deeds (Psalm xv. 2). For the present He wishes to preach to you with this sickness, that you may learn to practise patience and humility; let God act, for He knows what is better, and you don’t. If we had any reason for desiring health and strength, it would be to employ them in serving and pleasing God more; but if the Lord is pleased rather and takes it better that I should be occupied in being ill and in bearing with patience the troubles of sickness, His will be done, for that is what is better and more suitable for me. The Apostle St. Paul, preacher to the Gentiles, was left by the Lord in prison two years (Acts xxiv. 27) just at the time that he was so necessary to the primitive Church. There is not much done for you to complain of, if God keeps you in the prison of sickness two months, two years, even your whole life, if He pleases. You are not so necessary in the Church of God as was St. Paul.

To some it is apt to be a difficulty, when they have long and protracted illnesses and indispositions, not to be able to follow the community and to have to be singular in many things, and they are disconsolate over this, thinking that they are not as much religious as the rest, or at least that others may be disedified seeing their singularities and comforts; especially since sometimes the sickness and necessity they are in is not so apparent in the exterior, but only God and the sick man know what he suffers, whereas these singularities and exemptions strike the eye. To this I say that it is a good consideration and a very just sentiment, and he who feels it is to be praised; still he must not give up conformity to the will of God in his infirmity, but double his merit. This is done, on the one hand, by your conforming yourself entirely to the will of God in all your indispositions and ailments, since He wishes you to suffer them; and, on the other, by having a great desire, so far as it rests with you, to follow all the exercises of religion with much punctuality and exactness and feeling in your heart regret at not being able to do what the others do. In this way, besides the merit that you gain by bearing your sickness with patience and conformity, you may merit also under the second head as much as the rest, who are in sound health and fulfil all the exercises.

St. Augustine in his sixty-second sermon de Tempore, treating of the obligation that all have to fast at that time under pain of mortal sin, and coming to deal with the case of the invalid who cannot fast, says that for him it is sufficient that he cannot fast, but eats with grief of heart, groaning and sighing because he cannot fast while others are fasting. As the valiant soldier who is brought into camp wounded, feels more his inability to fight any longer or to signalize himself in the service of his king than the pain of his wounds and the rigorous treatment he is put under; so it is proper for good religious, when they are on the sick list, to feel more their inability to go with the community and do the exercises of religion than they feel the sickness itself. Still, after all, neither this nor anything else should rob us of our conformity to the will of God in our sickness, but we should accept it as sent by His hand for His greater glory and our greater good and profit.

The blessed St. Jerome tells how a monk once asked the holy Abbot John the Egyptian to heal him of a sickness and high fever that he had, and the saint replied: “You seek riddance of a thing that is very necessary for you; for, as the uncleanness and filth of bodily things is taken away by soap or strong lye and the like, so souls are purified by sickness and afflictions.”