35 — PASSIVE PURIFICATION

Presence of God. — My God, illumine my path, that I may not lose myself amid the darkness of tribulations.

Meditation

1 — Although by yourself, through the generous practice of total renunciation and an intense exercise of the theological virtues, you can enter into the night of the spirit, you will not be able to penetrate where it is most dense, unless God Himself places you there. He alone can thicken over your head the darkness of this night in such a way as to truly reduce you to nothing, to annihilate you in everything, so as to bring you to the purity and poverty of spirit required for union. More than taking initiatives, your task reduces, then, to accepting with love, to undergoing with patience and humility all that God disposes for you.

So as not to run the risk of resisting divine action, you must keep in mind that, in general, God purifies souls through the ordinary circumstances of life. In the life of every Christian, of every apostle, of every religious there is always a measure of suffering sufficient to actualize the purification of the spirit; these are sufferings from God Himself, chosen and disposed in the manner most suited according to the diverse needs of souls, but the evil is that very few know how to make use of them, because few know how to recognize, in the pains of life, the hand of God who wishes to purify them. Illnesses, bereavements, separations, partings from dear persons, misunderstandings, struggles, difficulties coming sometimes precisely from those from whom one would expect greater help and support, collapses of works loved and sustained at the price of great labors, abandonment by friends, material and spiritual solitude — behold something of the sufferings which, more or less, are found in the life of every man and which, therefore, you too will encounter in yours. Well, know that all this is positively willed, or at least permitted, by God to purify you even to the most intimate fibers of your being. In the face of these things never blame the malice of men, never stop to examine whether they are just or unjust, but look only at the blessed hand of God who offers you these bitter remedies to lead you to perfect health of spirit. “It is very necessary — says St. John of the Cross — that the soul bear with great patience and constancy all the tribulations and pains that God may wish to send it. Whether they be internal or external, spiritual or corporal, great or small, it must receive them all from the hand of the Lord, as directed to its good and medicine. They are its health” (F. 2, 30).

2 — Consider how much spirit of faith is necessary for you to accept from the hand of God all the circumstances that afflict you, humiliate you, contradict you, mortify you. At times it may be easier for you to bow before grave trials that come directly from the Lord — such as illnesses, bereavements, etc. — while perhaps you will feel greater repugnance before others more slight in which creatures enter into play. The immediate action of creatures, especially when their malice has part in it, makes it more difficult for you to discern the divine hand; here you need greater spirit of faith to go beyond the human side of circumstances, to go beyond the defective manner of acting of this or that person and to see, beyond all this, the dispositions of divine Providence which wishes to make use precisely of those creatures and also of their defects and errors to file down your self-love, to annihilate your pride.

In similar cases the counsel that St. John of the Cross gives to a religious will be very useful to you: “Think that all who live around you have the office, as in truth they have, of putting you to the test, working you some with word, others with deed, others finally with thought; and that in this you must be subject to all as the image is to him who works or paints or gilds it” (Ct. 15). The soul of faith, profoundly convinced that God guides all things and disposes everything for the good of those who love Him, sees in every neighbor a messenger of the Lord, having from Him the precise charge of exercising it in the virtues and especially in those of which it has greater need. Therefore this soul, instead of rebelling and becoming indignant at the undelicate or even unjust treatments it receives, bows its head and accepts them humbly as the cure most suited to free itself from its defects or imperfections. This is precisely the conduct you must keep if you wish to draw profit from all the trials God places on your path. Guard yourself, then, in such cases, from posing as a victim, from taking a tone of protest, of complaint or of revenge; whatever suffering may come to you from creatures, there is only one true explanation: the Lord wishes to purify you and to do so precisely by means of these external tribulations. Persuade yourself that everything greatly benefits your spiritual advancement, because one does not arrive at union with God if first one does not arrive at reducing oneself to nothing, that is, at establishing oneself in supreme humility.

Colloquy

“Teach me, O God, to suffer in peace the afflictions that You send me so that my soul may emerge from the crucible of trial more refined and clarified to better contemplate You who dwell within my interior. Then the travails that now seem to me insupportable will become as nothing to me and I shall desire to suffer them again, if thus You willed, since even the greatest trials and persecutions are never without profit. But I am too imperfect and do not bear them as I ought” (T.G.Vi. 30, 14).

“O greatness of my God! All that You permit in us of temptation and of tribulation, all is ordered to our good; and if we remembered nothing else, when we are down on earth, than Your goodness, this would be sufficient for us to conquer every temptation.

“O my loving and sweet Spouse Word, You who have all power in heaven and on earth, You are the one who confounds everyone and puts to flight all enemies. I for my part am weak and most weak, I see nothing, being full of miseries and of sins; but You, O Word, with a small glance put to flight all enemies like straw before the wind; yet You allow them to fight with Your servants to make these more glorious. And the greater grace and greater light You wish to give them, that they may love and know You the more, so much the more do You test by fire and purge their hearts like gold, that their virtues may appear as worthy and precious stones.

“In Your strength, O Word, confer on us the strength to fight; and whoever wishes to fight virginal for Your glory, must descend lower in the knowledge of self, yet always raising the heart to You so as not to be confounded” (St. M. Magdalene de’ Pazzi).