Blessed Francis’ Test of Patience in Suffering
One day he was visiting a sick person who, in the midst of intense suffering, not only showed great patience in all her words and actions, but plainly had the virtue deeply rooted in her heart. “Happy woman,” said Blessed Francis, “who has found the honey-comb in the jaws of the lion!”
Wishing, however, to make more certain that the patience she showed was solid and real, rooted and grounded in Christian charity, and such as to make her endure her sufferings for the love and for the glory of God alone, he determined to try her. He began to praise her constancy, to enlarge upon her sufferings, to express admiration at her courage, her silence, her good example, knowing that in this way he would draw from her lips the true language of her heart.
Nor was he deceived, for she, sincere and absolutely patient Christian that she was, answered him: “Ah! Father, you do not see the rebellious struggles of all my senses and feelings. In the lower region of my soul everything is in confusion and disorder, and if the grace and fear of God were not to us as a tower of strength I should long ago have altogether given way and rebelled against God. Picture me to yourself as like the Prophet whom the Angel carried by one hair of his head; my patience, as it were, hangs on a single thread, and were it not for the mighty help God is to me I should long ere now have been in hell.
“It is not then my virtue but the grace of God in me which makes me show so much courage. My own part in the matter is but pretence and hypocrisy. Were I to follow my own impulses I should moan, struggle, break out into passionate and bitter words, but God restrains my lips with bit and bridle, so that I dare not murmur under the blows dealt by His hand which I have learnt through His grace to love and honour.”
Our Blessed Father, on leaving her sick-room, said to those who were with him, “She has, indeed, true and Christian patience. Instead of pitying her for her sufferings we ought rather to rejoice over them, for this high virtue is only made perfect in infirmity. But do you notice how God hides from her own eyes the perfection which He is giving her? Her patience is not only courageous, but loving and humble; like pure balm, which, when unadulterated, sinks to the bottom of the water into which it is cast. Be careful, however, not to repeat to her what I have just said to you lest, by doing so, you should excite in her movements of vanity, and spoil the whole work of grace, whose waters only flow through the valley of humility.
“Let her peacefully possess her soul in patience, for she is at peace even in this extremity of bitterness.”
UPON LONG ILLNESSES.
Violent sicknesses either pass quickly or they carry us to the grave; slow maladies drag wearily on and exercise the patience of the sufferers, nor less that of those who tend them.
Our Blessed Father says on the subject: “Long sicknesses are good schools of mercy for those who wait upon the sick and of loving patience for those who suffer.
“They who wait upon the sick are at the foot of the Cross with our Lady and St. John, whose compassion they imitate; the sick man himself is on the Cross with our Saviour, Whose Passion he imitates.
“But how can we imitate either this compassion or this Passion if we do not suffer from the motive of the love of God? For the Blessed Virgin and St. John, the beloved Disciple, were moved by a compassion as much more sorrowful than ours, as their love for the Crucified, their own dearest Lord, was greater than ours can be. It was at the foot of the Cross that the sword of grief pierced Mary’s soul, and it was there that the beloved disciple drank that chalice of bitterness, which, after permitting him to share the glories of Thabor, the Saviour predicted should be his.”
The whole life of a true Christian is one long period of suffering. Those who endure not with Jesus Christ, are not fit to reign with Him. “O soul in grace,” says our Blessed Father, “thou art not yet the spouse of Jesus glorified, but of Jesus crucified. This is why the rings, necklaces, and other ornaments which He gives you, and with which He is pleased to adorn you, are crosses, nails, and thorns; and the marriage feast He sets before you gall, hyssop, and vinegar. It is in Heaven we shall possess the rubies, diamonds, and emeralds, the wine, the manna, and the honey.” The world is a vast quarry in which are hewn out and shaped those living stones which are to build up the heavenly Jerusalem, as the Church sings:
Tunsionibus, pressuris,
Expoliti lapides
Suis cooptantur locis,
Per manus Artificis:
Disponuntur permansuri
Sacris ædificiis.[1]
Thou too, O Church, which here we see,
No easy task hath builded thee.
Long did the chisels ring around!
Long did the mallet’s blows rebound!
Long worked the head, and toiled the hand!
Ere stood thy stones as now they stand.