Of a Means That Will Help Us Much to Bear Well and with Conformity the Afflictions That the Lord Sends Us, As Well Particular As General, Which Is the Knowledge and Inward Consciousness of Our Own Sins

IT is the common doctrine of the saints that, ordinarily speaking, God is wont to send those public calamities and chastisements for sins committed, as we are told in Holy Scripture, which is full of such narratives. It is for our sins, O Lord, that thou hast sent us these afflictions, because we sin and do evil and obey not thy commandments: therefore whatever thou hast sent upon us, and all that thou hast done us, in strict justice hast thou done it (Dan. iii, 28). Thus we see that God chastised His people and gave them over into the hands of their enemies when they offended Him and delivered them when they repented of their sins, did penance, and returned to Him. On this account Achior, captain and chief of the sons of Ammon, declared to Holofernes how God protected the people of Israel and how He chastised them when they departed from His obedience. “Therefore,” he said, “before attacking them, contrive to find out if at this period they have offended God. If that is the case, you may make sure of the victory; but if not, you had better give up this enterprise. For it will not go well and nothing will come of it put disgrace and confusion, for God will fight for His people, against Whom none can fight and prevail” (Judith v. 5-24).

The saints take special note of this on those words which Christ our Redeemer, after He had healed him, addressed to the man at the Sheep Pool who had been ailing for thirty-eight years. Now thou art healed: take care henceforth to sin no more, lest something worse befall thee (John v. 14). Accordingly, one of the means that will help us much in calamities and tribulations, as well general as particular, to fall in with the will of God and bear them in great patience, will be to enter forthwith into ourselves and consider our sins and how we deserve this chastisement, for in this way, whatever adversity befalls us, we shall bear it well and judge it to be less than what would be in proportion to our faults.

St. Bernard and St. Gregory handle this point well. St. Bernard says: “If the fault is felt inwardly, as it ought to be felt, the outward punishment will be felt little or not at all.” Thus the holy King David did not feel the curses which Semei launched out against him, seeing the war which his own son was making upon him. Thou seest that my own son, the fruit of my body, is seeking my life: how much more now a son of Jemini! (II Kings xvi. 11). St. Gregory on that saying (Job xi. 6) : Thou shalt know that God chastiseth thee less than thy wickedness deserveth, illustrates this by a good comparison. When a sick man feels his ulcer inflamed or his flesh putrid, he gives himself with good grace over into the hands of the surgeon, to open and cut where he pleases; and the more inflamed and the more putrid the wound, the more willingly does he suffer the knife and the cautery. So when a man really feels the wound and infirmity that sin has caused in his soul, he willingly submits to the cautery of affliction and humiliation and mortification with which God goes about to cure this wound and draw off the putrid matter from it. “The pain of the scourge,” he says, “is mitigated when the fault is owned”—Dolor flagelli temperatur cum culpa cognoscitur. If you do not take in good part the mortification and affliction that is offered you, it is because you do not know the malady of your faults nor feel the rottenness that is in you, and so you cannot bear to suffer the cautery and the lancet.

Holy men and true servants of God not only take their punishment willingly, but they desire it and earnestly ask it of God. Who will grant that my petition may come about, and that he who hath begun will even crush me outright, let loose his hand upon me, and cut me down, and this be my consolation, that afflicting me with pain he spare me not (Job vi. 8). Prove me, O Lord, and try me, says the psalmist, for I am prepared for scourges (Psalm xxv. 2; xxxvii. 18) —Bonum mihi, quia humiliasti me. The servants of God, says St. Gregory, desire that His Majesty may chastise and humble them in this life; and they are rather out of heart when they consider their faults on the one hand, and on the other see that God has not chastised them for them; for then they suspect and fear that He means to defer their chastisement to the next life, when it will be done with rigor. And this is what Job goes on to say: And this be my consolation, that in afflicting me with sorrows he spare me not. It is as though they would say: Since God pardons some in this life to chastise them forever in the next, let Him not pardon me in that way in this life, that afterwards He may pardon me forever. Let God chastise me as a loving Father, that He may not afterwards chastise me as a rigorous judge. I will not murmur nor complain of His scourges; J will not contradict the utterances of the Holy One (Job vi. 10). This is also what St. Augustine says: “Here burn, here cut, here spare me nothing, that Thou mayest spare me for eternity.”

It is part of our ignorance and blindness to feel bodily afflictions so acutely and to take spiritual afflictions so lightly. It is not afflictions that we should feel so much as sins. If we knew and pondered well the gravity of our faults, all punishment would seem to us little and we should say with Job (xxxiii. 27): I have sinned and indeed done wrong, and have not received as I deserved—words that we ought to carry ever in our heart and repeat often with our mouth. I have sinned, O Lord, and indeed have done wrong and offended Thy Divine Majesty, and I have not been chastised as I deserved; for all that we can suffer in this life is nothing in comparison with what one single [mortal] sin deserves. Would that thou couldst come to understand that God punisheth thee much less than thy wickedness deserveth (Job xi. 6). Whoever will consider that he has offended God and deserved to be in hell for ever and ever, what ignominies, what injuries, what insults will he not take with good will in recompense and satisfaction for the offenses that he has committed against the majesty of God! Let him curse, for perchance the Lord will be pleased to regard my affliction, and will render me blessings for the curses of this day (II Kings xvi. 12), said David when Semei cursed and insulted him. Let him alone, let him insult me, let him load me with injuries and insults; perchance the Lord will be satisfied with that and will hold Himself compensated and satisfied thereby for my sins and have mercy on me; and that will be a great piece of luck for me. This is the way in which we should embrace the insults and hardships that meet us. They are welcome, for haply the Lord will be pleased to take them in discount and satisfaction for our sins and will have mercy on us, and that will be great good luck. If the time that we wasted in complaining and resenting our afflictions, we spent in turning in this manner upon ourselves, we should please God more and mend matters better.

The saints used this means on the like occasions and made a practice of it. Thus we read of some of them, as St. Catherine of Siena and others, that they attributed to their sins the afflictions and scourges that God sent His Church, and said: “I am the cause of these wars; my sins are the cause of this pestilence and these troubles that God sends us.” They thought that their sins deserved all that and more. And it makes in confirmation of this, that God has often punished a whole people for the sin of one individual, as for the sin of David He sent a pestilence upon all the people of Israel, and Scripture says that there died seventy thousand men in three days (II Kings xxiv. 15). But you will say, he was a king, and for the sins of the head God chastises the people. But for the sin of Achan, a private man, who had stolen certain little things at Jericho, God punished the whole people, so that three thousand soldiers of the most valiant in the army turned their backs on the enemy and were forced to fly on his account. Not only for the sin of the head, but also for the sin of an individual God is wont to punish the rest. In this way the saints explain what Holy Scripture so often repeats, that God visits the sins of the fathers on the children even to the third and fourth generation. The fault of the father, Scripture says, shall not pass on to the son, nor that of the son on to the father. The soul that sinneth, the same shall die: the son shall not bear the fault of the father, nor the father the fault of the son (Exod. xx. 5; xxxiv. 7: Num. xiv. 18; Ezech. xviii. 20). But as regards punishment, God is wont to punish some for the sins of others; and so perhaps for my sins, or yours, God will punish the whole house and the whole order.

Let us, then, keep before our eyes on the one hand this consideration, and on the other the good pleasure of God, and so we shall easily fall in with His will and with the afflictions which He sends us, and shall say with the priest Heli: He is the Lord, let him do what is good in his eyes (I Kings iii. 18) ; and those holy Maccabees: As it shall be the will of God in heaven, so let it be done (I Mace. iii. 60); and with the Prophet David: I was dumb, O Lord, and opened not my mouth, because thou didst it (Psalm xxxviii. 10). I complained not, O Lord, of the troubles Thou hast sent me; rather, as if I were dumb, I was silent and bore them with much patience and conformity because I knew, Lord, that Thou didst send them. This should be always our consolation in all things. God wills it, God does it, God commands it; it is He that sends it; it is welcome. There is no other reason required for bearing all things well.

On those words of the psalm: My beloved is as the son of the unicorn (Psalm xxviii. 7), the saints observe that God is compared to the unicorn because the unicorn has its horn below its eyes, that it may see right well where it strikes, not as the bull, which has its horns above and does not see where it deals its blow; and, further, the unicorn heals with that very horn wherewith it strikes; so God heals with that wherewith He strikes.

So pleasing to God is this conformity and humble submission to punishment that sometimes it is a means to appease the Lord and make Him give over the punishment. In the ecclesiastical histories it is told of Attila, King of the Goths, who laid waste so many provinces and called himself the Terror of the World and the Scourge of God, that, when he was besieging the city of Troyes in Champagne, in France, there went out to meet him St. Lupus, bishop of that city, clad in his pontifical robes, with all his clergy, and said to him: ‘Who art thou, that troublest and disturbest the earth?” He replied: “I am the Scourge of God.” Then the holy bishop bade them open the gates, saying: ‘Welcome to the Scourge of God.” And the soldiers coming into the city, the Lord blinded them in such a way that they went through without doing any harm. For though Attila was a scourge, the Lord would not have him be such to those who received him as His scourge with so great submission.