4th Week after Easter: Tuesday

Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation

We will meditate to-morrow upon the conduct to be observed in states of aridity, and we shall see that we must keep ourselves: 1st, from the discouragement which leads to laxity; 2d, from the trouble which takes peace away from the soul. Our resolution shall be: 1st, to accept cheerfully the disgust, the weariness, and the aridities we may meet with in the accomplishment of our duties; 2d, to keep ourselves calm and patient, spite of our interior troubles. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of the Psalmist: “In a desert land, and where there is no way, and no water, so in the sanctuary have I come before Thee” (Ps. lxii. 3).

Meditation for the Morning

Let us adore Jesus Christ afflicted upon the cross by the abandonment of His Father. “My God, My God,” He exclaims, “why hast Thou forsaken Me?” (Mark xv. 34.) Let us bless Him for having willed to pass through this state of abandonment and aridity to encourage us to bear it ourselves.

FIRST POINT

In Times of Aridity we must Keep Ourselves on our Guard against Discouragement

To serve God when we find pleasure in doing so is an easy thing, but to bear the cross without feeling the unction of it, to drag, as though it were a burden, a cold and insensible heart to prayer, to meditate without feeling any taste for it, to communicate without being sensible of any attraction towards it, to fulfil our duties without enjoying any consolation, in a word, to be like a stupid creature, a beast of labor, in our relations with God (Ps. lxxii. 23), this is what often discourages and engenders in us feelings of sadness and of melancholy, which renders us insupportable to ourselves and to each other. In these states, it is greatly to be feared that we shall end by abandoning everything, for then we have no longer hearts for anything. To so dangerous a temptation as this we must oppose: 1st, the rights of God. God has a right to require from us even things in which we find no pleasure. Never was a servant authorized not to serve his master for the reason that what he was commanded to do wearied him or gave him no pleasure; now God is our master, and He has an undeniable right over all our actions, independent of our tastes as well as of our repugnances. We must combat this temptation with, 2d, the law of penance. We have sinned greatly, we still sin every day. Now the best penance for so many sins is to serve God, spite of the disgust and repugnance (I. Kings iii. 18) of discouraged nature. This is why the saints, when they received sensible consolations and, as it were, the caresses of grace, said: O God, this is not suitable for a sinner like me; and when they experienced interior troubles: Now, Lord, this is exactly how I ought to be treated. My daily infidelities deserve this chastisement and greater chastisement still. We must combat it, 3d, with the hope of heaven. Is it just to desire to be paid at the time for all we do for God, and not to be willing to await the recompense which will be given us in Paradise, or give credit to God until then? Oh, how badly we understand our own interests! If we are not remunerated here below by sensible consolations, we shall have a double recompense in heaven—the recompense of the action performed purely for God, and the recompense of the courage which overcame the repugnance: and this double recompense will be eternal. Let us know, then, how to wait: upon earth patience, in heaven enjoyment, but a better kind of enjoyment and an enjoyment which will never end. Let us penetrate ourselves deeply with these truths.

SECOND POINT

In Seasons of Aridity we must be on our Guard against Agitation and Keep our Soul at Peace

The soul when it is in a state of aridity and insensibility sometimes imagines itself to be abandoned by God and to be no longer loved by Him because it receives from Him nothing but severity, and no longer to love Him because it feels itself to be cold and tepid. If God ceases to caress it as a mother does her child, it believes all to be lost, is discouraged and depressed. Agitated and ill at ease, it does not know itself any longer, it does not see itself, it does not know whence it comes or whither it goes. Distracted by its troubles, it does not any longer hear the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking within it; it no longer maintains that sweet and peaceful attention to itself which follows all the movements of the heart, which gives facility to prayer, wisdom for counselling it, and which makes it advance in virtue. O my soul, wherefore dost thou thus trouble thyself and lose thy peace? (Ps. xlii. 5.) Wherefore, because thou art displeased with thyself dost thou fear that thou dost displease God? True piety does not consist in tastes and in feelings, but only in the firm determination to serve God. Sensible fervor is a gift which God bestows when it so pleases Him; it is not a service which He requires, since it is a thing which does not depend upon ourselves. If He refuses us this favor, which He alone can give, He will not revenge His withholding it upon us. Insensibility is so far from being an evil that all the saints have been subject to it (II. Imit. ix. 7, 4). The holy man Job is a proof of it, when He said to God: Lord, Thou dost visit me in the morning with Thy consolations, and in the evening Thou dost try me by Thy absence (Job vii. 18). Whence the pious author of the Imitation draws this conclusion: If it has been thus with the greatest saints, why should we who are poor and miserable be grieved because we are treated in the same way? (II. Imit. ix. 5.) Do we follow these holy maxims?

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.