SUFFERING[88]
The cross has accompanied me from the cradle; but then, Jesus has made me love it passionately.
One day my sister Marie, speaking of suffering, said that instead of making me walk by that way, the good God would no doubt carry me always like a little child. These words recurred to me after Holy Communion on the following day, and my heart was fired with an ardent desire of suffering. I felt too an inward assurance, that crosses in great number were in reserve for me. Then my soul was inundated with consolations such as I have never had again in all my life. Suffering became my attraction, in it I found charms that entranced me.
Another great desire that I felt, was to love but God alone and to find no joy save only in Him. Often during my thanksgiving after Holy Communion I used to repeat this passage from the Imitation: “O Jesus, who art ineffable sweetness, turn for me into bitterness all the consolations of earth.”[89] These words came from my lips without effort; I uttered them like a child who repeats without too well understanding, words prompted by a friend.
Suffering has held out its arms to me from my very entrance into Carmel and lovingly have I embraced it. My intention in coming here, I declared in the solemn examination which preceded my profession: I am come in order to save souls, and especially to pray for Priests. When we want to attain an end we must employ the means, and Jesus having made me understand that He would give me souls by means of the cross, the more crosses I met with the more my attraction to suffering increased. During five years this way was mine; but I alone knew it. Here was just the hidden flower that I wanted to offer to Jesus, this flower which exhaled its fragrance for Heaven alone.
For one pain endured with joy, we shall love the good God more for ever.
In my soul’s intercourse with Jesus—nothing ... dryness! sleep! Since my Beloved wills to sleep I shall not hinder Him; I am too happy in seeing that He does not treat me like a stranger, that He is not constrained with me. He pierces His little ball through and through with pin-pricks sore indeed.... When it is this tender Friend who Himself pierces His ball, the pain is naught but sweetness—so gentle is His Hand. How different when creatures pierce it!
Yet I am happy, yes, truly happy to suffer. If Jesus does not Himself directly pierce His little ball, it is certainly He who guides the hand that wounds!
Yes, I desire them, those heart-thrusts, those pin-pricks that give so much pain.... Sacrifice I prefer to all ecstacies: therein lies happiness for me, I find it nowhere else. The little reed has no fear of breaking, for it is planted on the shore of the waters of Love; and so, when it bends, that beneficent wave invigorates it, and makes it long for another storm to come and bow down its head anew. My weakness it is, that makes my whole strength. Whatever happens I cannot get broken; I see only the gentle hand of Jesus.
To win the palm no suffering is too great.
The drop of gall must be mingled in every cup, but I find that trials greatly help to detach us from earth; they make us look higher than this world. Nothing here below can satisfy us; we can enjoy a little repose only by being ready to do God’s Will.
My soul has known many kinds of trials, greatly have I suffered here on earth. In my childhood I suffered with sadness; now, it is with peace and joy that I taste of all the bitter fruits.
Suffering united to love is the only thing that appears to me desirable in this vale of tears.
When we are expecting only suffering the least joy surprises us: suffering itself becomes the greatest of joys when we seek it as a precious treasure.
There are people who take everything in the way that gives them the most pain; with me it is the reverse; I see always the good side of things. If I have naught but pure suffering, without any break, well! I make of it my joy.
Joy is not in the things that surround us, it resides in the interior of the soul. One may possess it in the depths of a gloomy prison as well as in a royal palace. Thus am I happier in Carmel, even in the midst of interior and exterior trials, than in the world, where nothing was wanting to me.
If now, amid trials, and in the thick of the fight, we can already find such delight in the thought that God has drawn us away from the world, what will it be, when in Heaven’s eternal glory and never-ending rest, we shall understand the incomparable favour He has shown us in choosing us here, to dwell in His own House—the very threshold of Heaven.
Let us not expect to find Love without Suffering. Our nature is there, and it is not there for nothing; but what treasures it enables us to acquire! It is our means of gain; so precious is it that Jesus came down upon earth expressly to possess it.... We want to suffer generously, grandly; we wish never to fall; what illusion! And what does it matter to me if I fall every minute? I find great profit in it, for thereby I see my weakness. My God, You know what I am capable of unless You carry me in Your arms; and if You leave me alone, well; it is that it pleases you to see me on the ground, so why should I be disquieted?
Life is often irksome and bitter; it is hard to begin a laborious day, above all when Jesus hides Himself from us. What is this tender Friend doing? Does He not then see our anguish, the load that oppresses us; where is He? Why does He not come to console us?
Ah, fear not.... He is there, quite near! He is watching us; He, it is, who begs for these our labours and our tears.... He has need of them for souls, for our soul; He wants to give us so glorious a recompense. Ah! truly, it costs Him to make us drink of this bitter cup, but He knows that it is the one way by which to prepare us to know Him as He knows Himself and to become ourselves God-like. What a destiny! How great is the soul. Let us rise above all that passes away, let us hold aloof from the earth, up on high the air is so pure; Jesus may hide Himself but one is conscious of His presence.
When we speak of peace we do not mean joy—not at least sensible joy; to suffer in peace it is enough that we truly will all that God wills.
Notwithstanding the trial which deprives me of every feeling of enjoyment I can yet exclaim, “Thou hast given me delight, O Lord, in all Thou dost.”[90] For is there a greater joy than to suffer for Thy Love? The more intense the suffering and the less apparent to human eyes, the more lovingly dost Thou smile upon it, O my God. And even—supposing an impossibility—if Thou wert unaware of it, I would still be happy to suffer, in the hope that by my tears I might perhaps prevent, or make reparation for one single sin against faith.
Mine is not an unfeeling heart, and it is just because of its capacity to suffer deeply that I desire to offer to Jesus every kind of suffering it can endure.
Life is full of sacrifices, it is true; but why look for happiness in it? Is it not simply “a night to be passed in a bad Inn” as says our Holy Mother Saint Teresa?
My heart has an ardent thirst for happiness, but well do I see that no creature is capable of allaying this thirst. On the contrary, the more I might drink of the waters of that enchanted spring the more burning would be my thirst.
I know a fountain where they that drink shall yet thirst,[91] but with a thirst most sweet, a thirst one can always satisfy; this fountain is the suffering that is known to Jesus alone!...
Our Lord never asks of us any sacrifice above our strength. Sometimes, in truth, the Divine Master makes us taste the full bitterness of the chalice which He presents to our soul. When He asks the sacrifice of everything most dear to us in this world, it is impossible unless by a very special grace, not to cry out as He did in the Garden of the Agony: “My Father, let this chalice pass from Me....” But let us also hasten to add: “Nevertheless not as I will but as Thou wilt.”[92] It is very consoling to think that Jesus—Divine Strength itself—has experienced all our weakness, that He trembled at the sight of the bitter chalice, the chalice He had longed for so ardently.
Since our Well-Beloved has “trodden the wine-press alone”[93]—the wine which He gives us to drink—in our turn let us not refuse to wear garments dyed with blood, let us press out for Jesus a new wine which may slake His thirst, and looking around Him He will no longer be able to say that He is alone; we shall be there to help.[94]
Neglect, forgetfulness ... this it is, it seems to me, which still pains Him the most.
Here on earth, where all changes, one sole thing changes not, the King of Heaven’s mode of acting as regards His friends. Ever since He uplifted the standard of the Cross, it is in its shadow that all must fight and gain the victory.
It is indeed more through suffering and persecution than through eloquent preaching, that God wills to establish His Kingdom in souls.
I want to forget this world; here below, all things weary me, I find no joy save one, that of suffering ... and this joy, though unfelt, is above every other.
When I suffer much, when things that are painful and disagreeable befall me, instead of assuming an air of sadness, I respond by a smile. At first I was not always successful, but now it is a habit which I am very happy to have acquired.
A novice was complaining of being more tired than her Sisters, for besides the common work, she had done another task, of which they knew nothing. Thérèse answered: “I want to see you always like a valiant soldier who does not complain of his pains; who thinks very seriously of the wounds of his brothers and regards his own as mere scratches. Why do you feel this fatigue to such a degree? It is because no one knows about it....
SR. THÉRÈSE OF THE CHILD JESUS
AND OF THE HOLY FACE
Carmelite of the Monastery of Lisieux 1873-1897
“Blessed Margaret Mary having had two whitlows used to say she had only really suffered from the first one, because it had not been possible for her to hide the second from her Sisters, and thus it became the object of their compassion.
“This feeling is natural to us; yet to wish that all should know when we suffer is a very commonplace manner of acting.”
During the first months of her illness it was on her hard palliasse that Sister Thérèse passed the time of rest, and her nights were very bad: when asked whether she did not need some assistance during those hours of pain, she replied: “Oh, no on the contrary, I think myself very fortunate to be in a cell distant enough for my Sisters not to hear me. I rejoice to suffer alone; but from the moment I am pitied and surrounded with delicate attentions I can no longer feel this joy.”
The Sister infirmarian remarking, “It is said that you have never suffered very much.” Thérèse smiled and pointing to a glass containing a draught of medicine, bright red in colour, replied, “See this little glass, one would imagine it full of some choice liqueur, but in reality I take nothing that is more bitter. Well! it is an image of my life; to the eyes of others it has ever appeared clothed in the most radiant hues; to them it seemed as though I drank a delicious liqueur, while in truth it was bitterness. I say bitterness, and yet my life has not been bitter, for I have known how to make of all bitterness my sweetness and my joy.”
“You are in great pain at this moment, are you not?” “Yes ... but I have so much desired to suffer.”
“How it grieves us to see you suffer, and to think you may perhaps have still more to endure,” the novices were saying to her.
“Oh! do not be troubled about me, I have arrived at the stage of being no longer able to suffer, because all suffering is sweet to me.”
A sister, who doubted her patience, noticed, when visiting her one day, an expression of heavenly joy on her countenance and wished to know the reason. “It is because of the very acute pain I am feeling,” replied Thérèse, “I have always striven to love suffering and to give it a cordial welcome.”
“Why are you so gay this morning?” she was asked; “It is because I have had two little trials, nothing gives me little joys like little trials.”
Another time: “You have had a great many trials today.”
“Yes, but ... seeing that I love them!... I love everything the good God sends me.”
Again, when some one said to her: “It is dreadful—all you are suffering.”
“No, it is not dreadful; could a little Victim of Love find anything dreadful that her Spouse sends her? He gives me at each moment what I can bear; not more; and the minute He increases my sufferings He also augments my fortitude.
“Yet I could never ask for greater sufferings, for I am too little; they would be my own—my own choosing, then I should have to bear them by myself, and I have never been able to do anything all alone.”
During her long and painful agony she exclaimed: “The chalice is full to the brim. Never could I have believed it possible to suffer so much.... I can only find the explanation in my extreme longing to save souls.... Oh! I would not suffer less.”
FOOTNOTES:
[88] No reader should be discouraged by this chapter on Suffering. What Sœur Thérèse says is very consoling for those who are nailed to the Cross; and others must remember that God had given to His humble Servant a sensible attraction for suffering, which is a rare grace and reserved to very few souls, though many imagine they possess it, and mistake their road choosing to follow this supposed attraction. Without the sensible desire and even though experiencing an invincible repugnance to suffer, souls can be sanctified. What pleases God is that the suffering be borne with love.
[89] Imit., III, ch. xxvi, 3.
[90] Ps., xci, 5.
[91] Cf. Eccles., xxiv, 29.
[92] Matt., xxvi, 39.
[93] Isa., lxiii, 3.
[94] Isa., lxiii, 5.