Patience
Thoughts on the Patient Endurance of Sorrows and Sufferings
RESULTS OF ORIGINAL SIN
Of the many reasons why you must suffer, the first and principal one is this: As a child of Adam and a member of the great human family you must, like all the rest of men, endure your share of the painful consequence of original sin.
If there were no original sin, suffering would be unknown among the children of men.
But here we must add a reflection that will serve for our consolation in the midst of our trials. Thanks to the infinite wisdom and goodness of God, our present lot, sad though it undoubtedly is, is by no means as hopeless as it would seem to be at first sight.
In the light which our Holy Faith sheds on this subject, the state of suffering is seen to be a state of great blessedness and of unlimited possibilities of increase of glory in heaven. Divine Wisdom has contrived in a most wonderful way to draw immense good out of so great an evil. "O felix culpa!" - "O happy sin of Adam, which has merited for us so great a Redeemer!" is the jubilant hymn of gratitude and gladness which re-echoes in our churches on Holy Saturday. And why?
Because Jesus Christ has made adequate atonement for Adam's sin and now offers us a copious supply of His redeeming and saving grace which more than compensates for the loss of our original inheritance. True, this grace does not restore the paradise which once existed on earth, nor does it remove from our lives the evils and miseries which spring from original sin; but it does what is infinitely better and more profitable to us in the end - it enables us to endure all sufferings with patience and resignation, to sanctify them by uniting them with the bitter passion and death of Our Lord, converting them into sources of rich supernatural merits, which in turn will procure for us in heaven a throne far more glorious and exalted than we would obtain if we had not fallen in Adam from the state of our original perfection.
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Compiled and Edited by Rev. F. X. Lasance
Author of "My Prayerbook," etc.
1937, Benziger Brothers
Printers to the Holy Apostolic See
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