Abandonment; or, Absolute Surrender to Divine Providence · 25 of 35

Book Third, Chapter III. The Afflictions with which God visits the Soul are but Loving Artifices at which she will One Day rejoice.

Souls who walk in light sing canticles of joy; those who walk amid shadows sing anthems of woe. Let one and the other sing to the end the portion and anthem God assigns them. We must add nothing to what He has completed. There must flow every drop of this gall of divine bitterness with which He wills to inebriate them. Behold Jeremias and Ezechiel: theirs was the language of sighs and lamentations, and their only consolation was in the continuation of their lament. He who would have dried their tears would have deprived us of the most beautiful portions of the Holy Scriptures. The spirit that afflicts is the only one which can console. The streams of sorrow and consolation flow from the same source.

When God astonishes a soul she must needs tremble; when He menaces, she cannot but fear. We have but to leave the divine operation to its own development; it bears within itself the remedy as well as the trial. Weep, dear souls; tremble, suffer disquiet and anguish; make no effort to escape these divine terrors, these heavenly lamentations. Receive into the depth of your being the waters of that sea of bitterness which inundated the soul of Christ. Continue to sow in tears at the will of divine grace, and insensibly by the same will their source shall be dried. The clouds will dissolve, the sun will shed its light, the springtime will strew your path with flowers, and your self-abandonment will manifest to you the whole extent of the admirable variety of the divine action.

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Truly, man disquiets himself in vain! All that passes within him is like a dream. One shadow follows and effaces another, just as the fancies of sleep succeed one another, some troubling, others delighting, the mind. Man is the sport of these imaginations which consume one another, and the grand awakening will show the equal emptiness of them all. It will dissipate all illusions, and he will no longer heed the perils or fortunes of this dream called life.

Lord, can it not be said that Thy children sleep in Thy bosom during all the night of faith, while at Thy pleasure Thou fillest their souls with an infinite number and infinite variety of experiences which are in reality but holy and mysterious reveries? In this obscure night of the soul they are filled with veritable and awful terrors, with anguish and weariness which on the glorious day Thou wilt change into true and solid joys.

At their awakening, holy souls, restored to a clearer vision and fuller consciousness, will never weary admiring the skill, the art, the invention, the loving artifices of the Bridegroom. They will comprehend how impenetrable are His ways, how surpassing comprehension are His devices, how beyond discovery His disguises, how impossible consolation when He willed that they should mourn. On the day of this awakening the Jeremias and the Davids will see that that which wrought their bitterest pain was subject of rejoicing to God and the angels. Wake not the spouse, worldly-wise, industrious minds filled with self-activity; leave her to sigh and tremblingly seek for the Bridegroom. True, He eludes her, and disguises Himself; she sleeps, and her griefs are but as the phantoms which come with night and sleep. But disturb her not; let the Bridegroom work upon this cherished soul and depict in her what He alone can paint or express. Leave Him to develop the result of this state. He will awake her when it is time. Joseph causes Benjamin to weep; servants of Joseph, reveal not his secret to this cherished brother! The artifice of Joseph is beyond the penetration of Benjamin. He and his poor brothers are plunged in grief; they see naught in the loving artifice of Joseph but irremediable suffering. Enlighten them not: He will remedy all; He will reveal himself to them, and they will admire the wisdom of Him who out of so much woe and desolation wrought the truest joy they have ever known.