4th Week after Easter: Wednesday

Summary of the Morrow’s Meditation

We will continue to meditate upon the conduct to be observed in states of aridity, and we shall then see that we must be: 1st, more faithful in performing our exercises of piety; 2d, we must keep ourselves united to God. We will then make the resolution: 1st, not to curtail any of our pious exercises, spite of the small amount of taste we have for them; 2d, to persevere, although we have no attraction thereto, in a spirit of recollection and of union with God. Our spiritual nosegay shall be the words of St. Augustine: “It is a great thing to be faithful to God in little things.”

Meditation for the Morning

Let us adore Jesus Christ in the Garden of Olives recommending His apostles to watch and to pray on the approach of temptation (Matt. xxvi. 41). They were overcome by sleep; they had no taste for prayer. In spite of that, Our Lord says to them: “Watch ye and pray.” Taste is not necessary, but prayer is indispensable. Let us thank Him for so useful a counsel.

FIRST POINT

In States of Aridity we must Remain Faithful to our Exercises of Piety

Pious exercises are the food of the soul. By retrenching any portion of them we weaken our souls, even as the body is weakened by diminishing its nourishment; and this weakness is all the more dangerous in states of aridity, when the soul is already weakened by the subtraction of graces. With the withdrawal of light night begins in us; the suppression of pious exercises finishes it, and casts the soul into utter darkness. Aridities place the soul on the edge of the precipice; pious exercises are the branch which sustains it and prevents it from falling: without them we become wholly earthly and wholly sensual; we have no longer any zeal for our salvation, and the soul is in the greatest peril. At such a time we ought to be more than ever exact in performing our spiritual exercises, give the usual time to prayer, maintain ourselves in the same religious attitude, observe the same rule of life, the same restraint over the senses, in a word, cut off nothing from what we did formerly, it signifying little whether we have a taste for it or experience nothing but disgust. The exercises which we perform without feeling any taste for them will save us all the more surely because they will be more meritorious and will better prove our love to God. Have we followed these rules?

SECOND POINT

In States of Aridity we must Maintain our Union with God

As in a state of aridity we find no consolation in ourselves, we are led to seek for it in outside things. He who yields to this temptation aggravates the evil. It is precisely then that we must all the more occupy ourselves with God in our interior, keep ourselves on our guard against useless thoughts and imaginations which render us oblivious of His presence, moderate our impulsiveness and our preoccupations, curiosity in looking at what passes around us, intemperance in our language, and levity in our deportment and manners, all of which things make us forget God. When God beholds in a soul courage to maintain itself constantly, although without taste, recollected both within and without, living in the arid desert of its heart with the same fidelity as in seasons of sensible devotion, He is touched by such holy dispositions, and hardly ever delays to visit it with His grace, at least in the ordinary course of His providence. Soon He makes His manna to fall in the desert, and He makes heavenly consolations issue out of the hard heart like water from the rock (Ps. cxlvii. 18). Let us believe the words of the King Prophet when He said, “My soul refused to be comforted, I remembered God and was delighted” (Ps. lxxvi. 3, 4)... What strong consolation for us in our days of trial!

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.