Chapter V

Caritas patiens est.

The soul that loves Jesus Christ loves to suffer.

This earth is a place of merits, and therefore a place of sufferings. Our homeland, where God has prepared rest for us in eternal joy, is paradise. In this world we have but a short time to remain; but in this short time we have many trials to endure. Homo natus de muliere, brevi vivens tempore, repletur multis miseriis (Iob. XIV, 1). We must suffer, and all must suffer: whether just or sinners, everyone must carry his cross. He who carries it with patience is saved; he who carries it with impatience is lost. The very same afflictions, says St. Augustine, send some to paradise and others to hell: Una eademque tunsio bonos perducit ad gloriam, malos reducit in favillam. By the trial of suffering, says the same saint, the chaff is distinguished from the wheat in the Church of God: he who in tribulations humbles himself and resigns himself to the divine will is wheat for paradise; he who grows proud and angry, and so abandons God, is chaff for hell.

On the day when the cause of our salvation must be judged, in order to receive the happy sentence of the predestined, our life must be found conformed to the life of Jesus Christ: Nam quos praescivit et praedestinavit conformes fieri imaginis Filii sui (Rom. VIII, 29). This was the purpose for which the Eternal Word descended to earth — to teach us by his example to bear with patience the crosses God sends us: Christus passus est pro nobis, wrote St. Peter, vobis relinquens exemplum ut sequamini vestigia eius (I Petr. II, 21). So Jesus Christ chose to suffer in order to encourage us to suffer. O God! What was the life of Jesus Christ? A life of shame and pain. The Prophet called our Redeemer: Despectum, novissimum virorum, virum dolorum (Is. LIII, 3): the man despised and treated as the lowest, the most wretched of all men, the man of sorrows; for the life of Jesus Christ was wholly filled with trials and sorrows.

Now just as God treated his beloved Son, so he treats everyone whom he loves and receives as his child: Quem enim diligit Dominus castigat; flagellat autem omnem filium quem recipit (Hebr. XII, 6). Hence the Lord said one day to St. Teresa: "Know that the souls most dear to my Father are those who are afflicted with the greatest sufferings." And so the saint, when she found herself beset with trials, said she would not have exchanged her sufferings for all the treasures of the world. After her death she appeared to a certain soul and revealed that she enjoyed a great reward in heaven, not so much for her good works as for the sufferings she had willingly endured in life for love of God; and that if for any reason she would have wished to return to the world, it would only have been to suffer something more for God.

He who loves God while suffering gains a double reward for paradise. St. Vincent de Paul used to say that in this life, not to suffer should be considered a great misfortune. And he added that a congregation or person who does not suffer, and whom the whole world applauds, is near to a fall. For this reason St. Francis of Assisi, on any day that passed without suffering some cross for God, feared that God had almost forgotten him. St. John Chrysostom writes that when the Lord grants someone the grace to suffer, he gives a greater grace than if he gave the power to raise the dead; for in working miracles, man becomes a debtor to God, but in suffering, God becomes a debtor to man. And he added that whoever suffers something for God, even if he had no other gift than to be able to suffer for the God he loves, this would be a great reward for him. Therefore he said that he valued more the grace given to Paul in being chained for Jesus Christ than in being caught up to the third heaven.

Patientia autem opus perfectum habet (Iac. I, 4). This means that nothing pleases God more than seeing a soul that suffers with patience and peace all the crosses he sends. This is what love does: it makes the lover resemble the beloved. St. Francis de Sales said: "All the wounds of the Redeemer are so many mouths that teach us how we must suffer for him. This is the science of the saints: to suffer constantly for Jesus; and so we shall quickly become saints." He who loves Jesus Christ desires to be treated as Jesus Christ was — poor, tormented, and despised. St. John saw all the saints clothed in white and with palms in their hands: Amicti stolis albis et palmae in manibus eorum (Ap. VII, 9). The palm is the emblem of martyrs, but not all the saints were martyred; how then do all the saints carry palms in their hands? St. Gregory answers that all the saints were martyrs either by the sword or by patience; and he adds: Nos sine ferro martyres esse possumus, si patientiam custodimus.

Here lies the merit of a soul that loves Jesus Christ: in loving and suffering. Hear what the Lord said to St. Teresa: "Do you think, my daughter, that merit consists in enjoying? No, it consists in suffering and in loving. Look at my life, all full of sufferings. Believe, daughter, that he who is most loved by my Father receives from him the greatest trials, and to this love corresponds. Look at these wounds, for your sufferings will never equal them. To think that my Father admits to his friendship people without trials is foolish." And St. Teresa adds for our consolation: "God never sends a trial without immediately repaying it with some favor."

Jesus Christ appeared one day to Blessed Battista Varani and told her that three are the greatest benefits he bestows on his beloved souls: the first is not to sin; the second, which is greater, is to do good works; the third, which is the greatest, is to suffer for love of him. Hence St. Teresa said that when someone does some good for God, the Lord repays it with some trial. And for this reason the saints, on receiving trials, gave thanks to God. St. Louis, King of France, speaking of the captivity he endured in the East, said: "I rejoice and give thanks to God more for the patience he granted me during my imprisonment than if I had conquered the whole earth." And St. Elizabeth, Princess of Thuringia, when after her husband's death she was driven from her lands together with her son and found herself a wanderer abandoned by all, went to a Franciscan convent and there had the Te Deum sung in thanksgiving to God for thus favoring her by letting her suffer for love of him.

St. Joseph Calasanz used to say: "To gain paradise, every effort is little." And before him the Apostle said: Non sunt condignae passiones huius temporis ad futuram gloriam quae revelabitur in nobis (Rom. VIII, 18). It would be a great gain to endure all the sufferings the holy martyrs endured throughout our entire life, in order to enjoy a single moment of paradise; how much more, then, should we embrace our crosses, knowing that the suffering of our brief life will win us an eternal blessedness? Momentaneum et leve tribulationis nostrae... aeternum gloriae pondus operatur in nobis (II Cor. IV, 17). St. Agapitus, a youth of few years, when the tyrant threatened to burn his head with a red-hot helmet, answered: "And what greater fortune can I have than to lose my head in order to see it crowned in paradise?" This led St. Francis to say: "So great is the good I await that every pain is a delight to me." But whoever wants the crown of paradise must fight and suffer: Si sustinebimus, et conregnabimus (II Tim. II, 12). There can be no reward without merit, nor merit without patience. Non coronatur, nisi qui legitime certaverit (Ibid. 5). And whoever fights with greater patience will have a greater crown. What a thing! When it comes to the temporal goods of this earth, worldly people try to acquire as much as they can; but when it comes to eternal goods, they say: "It is enough to have a corner in paradise!" The saints do not speak this way. They are content with anything in this life, and even strip themselves of earthly goods; but when it comes to eternal goods, they seek to gain as much as possible. I ask: which of these acts more wisely and prudently?

But speaking also of this life, it is certain that he who suffers with more patience enjoys more peace. St. Philip Neri used to say that in this world there is no purgatory: there is either paradise or hell; whoever bears tribulations with patience enjoys paradise; whoever does not, suffers hell. Yes, for as St. Teresa writes, whoever embraces the crosses God sends does not feel them. St. Francis de Sales, finding himself at a certain time surrounded by many tribulations, said: "For some time now, the many oppositions and secret contradictions that have befallen me bring me a peace so sweet that it has no equal; and they foretell to me the near establishment of my soul in its God, who in all truth is the sole ambition and the only desire of my heart." Ah, peace cannot be found by one who leads a disordered life, but only by one who lives united with God and with his holy will. A certain religious missionary, finding himself in the Indies watching a condemned man who was already on the scaffold about to be executed, was called over by the man, who said to him: "Know, Father, that I was once in your religious order; when I observed the rules, I led a life always full of contentment; but when I began to grow lax, I immediately began to feel pain in everything; so much so that I left religious life and abandoned myself to vice, which has finally brought me to this unhappy end you see." And he finished by saying: "I have told you this so that my example may benefit others." The Venerable Father Louis de Ponte used to say: "Take the sweet things of this life for bitter and the bitter for sweet, and so you will always enjoy peace." Yes, for the sweet things, though they please the senses, always leave behind the bitterness of remorse of conscience on account of the faulty complacency we usually take in them; but the bitter things, received with patience from the hand of God, become sweet and dear to souls that love him.

Let us be persuaded that in this valley of tears, true peace of heart can be had only by one who endures and embraces sufferings with love, in order to please God: this is what the state of corruption requires, from which we have all been infected by sin. The state of the saints on earth is to suffer while loving; the state of the saints in heaven is to enjoy while loving. Father Paolo Segneri the Younger once wrote to a penitent of his, to encourage her to suffer, that she should keep these words written at the feet of the Crucifix: This is how one loves. Not suffering itself, but the willingness to suffer for love of Jesus Christ, is the surest sign to see whether a soul loves him. "And what greater gain," said St. Teresa, "can there be than to have some proof that we are pleasing God?" Alas, most people are dismayed at the very name of cross, humiliation, and suffering! But there are many loving souls who find all their contentment in suffering, and would be almost inconsolable if they lived in this world without suffering. "Gazing upon Jesus crucified," said a holy person, "makes the cross so lovable to me that it seems I cannot be happy without suffering; the love of Jesus Christ suffices me for everything." This is what Jesus counsels those who wish to follow him — to take up and carry their cross: Tollat crucem suam... et sequatur me (Luc. IX, 23). But it must be taken up and carried not by force and with reluctance, but with humility, patience, and love.

Oh, what pleasure it gives God when someone embraces with humility and patience the crosses he sends! St. Ignatius of Loyola used to say: "There is no wood more apt to produce and preserve love for God than the wood of the holy cross" — that is, to love him in the midst of sufferings. One day St. Gertrude asked the Lord what she could offer him that would most please him; and he replied: "Daughter, you can do nothing more pleasing to me than to suffer with patience all the tribulations that come your way." Hence the great servant of God, Sister Vittoria Angelini, used to say that one day spent crucified is worth more than a hundred years of all other spiritual exercises. And the Venerable Father John of Avila said: "A single 'Blessed be God' in times of adversity is worth more than a thousand acts of thanksgiving in times of prosperity." Alas, men do not know the value of sufferings endured for God! Blessed Angela of Foligno said that suffering for God, if we truly understood it, "would be an object of plunder" — meaning that everyone would go in search of seizing from others the occasions of suffering. For this reason St. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi, knowing the preciousness of suffering, desired that her life be prolonged rather than to die and go to heaven; for, she said, "in heaven one cannot suffer."

The intent of a soul that loves God is nothing other than to unite itself entirely with God; but to arrive at this perfect union, let us hear what St. Catherine of Genoa said: "To arrive at union with God, adversities are necessary; because through them God works to consume all our evil movements, both interior and exterior. And therefore all injuries, contempt, illnesses, abandonment by relatives and friends, confusions, temptations, and other adversities are all supremely necessary for us, so that we may fight until, by way of victories, all evil movements within us are extinguished and we no longer feel them; and until all adversities seem to us no longer bitter but sweet for God's sake, we shall never arrive at divine union."

From all this, a soul that desires to be entirely God's must resolve, as St. John of the Cross writes, to seek in this life not to enjoy, but to suffer in all things, embracing eagerly all voluntary mortifications, and with even greater eagerness and love the involuntary ones, because these are more dear to God. Solomon said: Melior est patiens viro forti (Prov. XVI, 32). God is pleased with one who mortifies himself with fasts, hair shirts, and disciplines, for the fortitude he exercises in mortifying himself; but he is much more pleased with one who is strong in suffering with patience and cheerfulness the crosses God sends. St. Francis de Sales said: "The mortifications that come to us from God, or from men by his permission, are always more precious than those that are born of our own will; for it is a general rule that where there is less of our own choosing, there is more of God's pleasure and more of our profit." St. Teresa gave the same advice: "More is gained in a single day by trials that come from God or from our neighbor than in ten years by sufferings we take upon ourselves." Hence St. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi generously said that there was no suffering in the world so bitter that she would not have endured it with joy, thinking that it came from God; and indeed, in those great trials the saint endured during the five-year trial, it was enough to remind her that it was God's will for her to suffer thus, to restore her to peace. Ah, to acquire God, this great treasure, everything is little. Father Ippolito Durazzo used to say: "Let God cost what he will; he was never too expensive."

Let us pray the Lord to make us worthy of his holy love; for if we love him perfectly, all the goods of this earth will seem to us smoke and mud, and shame and suffering will become our delight. Let us hear what Chrysostom says of a soul that has given itself entirely to God: "When one has arrived at the perfect love of God, he becomes as if he were alone upon the earth. He no longer cares for either glory or disgrace; he despises temptations and sufferings; he loses his taste and appetite for all things. And finding no support or rest in anything, he goes continually in search of the beloved without ever growing weary; so that when he works, when he eats, when he watches, when he sleeps, in every action and conversation, all his thought and all his study is to find the beloved, for there is his heart where his treasure is."

In this chapter we have spoken of patience in general; in Chapter XV we shall treat of several particular matters in which we must especially exercise our patience.

Affections and Prayers

My dear and beloved Jesus, my treasure, for the offenses I have committed against you I would not deserve to be able to love you anymore; but by your merits, I beg you, make me worthy of your pure love. I love you above all things, and I repent with all my heart for having once despised you and driven you from my soul; but now I love you more than myself, I love you with all my heart, O infinite good; I love you, I love you, I love you, and I desire nothing else than to love you perfectly; and I fear nothing else than to find myself deprived of your holy love.

My enamored Redeemer, make me know the great good that you are, and the love you have borne me, to oblige me to love you.

Ah, my God, do not allow me to live any longer ungrateful to your great goodness. Enough of my offending you; I wish to leave you no more; the years that remain to me I wish to spend entirely in loving you and pleasing you. My Jesus, my love, help me; help a sinner who wishes to love you and be entirely yours.

O Mary, my hope, your Son listens to you; pray to him for me, and obtain for me the grace to love him perfectly.