Thoughts on the Patient Endurance of Sorrows and Sufferings
SUFFERING WITH CHRIST
Let us remember that suffering is a means of expiation and thus of fitting our own souls and those of others for immediate admittance to heaven.
"Oh happy penance," said St. John of the Cross, "which has merited me so great a glory!"
But numbers of those who suffer make no use of their opportunities.
It is not enough to suffer; we have to accept, and unite ourselves with Christ. The mere vibration of the nerves or the smart of the spirit is of no value whatever. There must be the act of the heart.
But how sweet an exercise it is when we feel the scourge, the thorns, and the nails, of Jesus Christ, to unite our hearts with His and to say:
O my Saviour, the act of Thy heart, intensified by suffering, destroyed sin, chained the demon, saved the world, and opened the fountains of grace; use my few sufferings for the same grand work of expiation!-The Spirit of Bishop Hedley.
They have no merit or efficacy of their own; but, as long as I live in Thee and Thou in me, my sufferings do Thy work (however feebly), and minister to the expiation of my own sins and those of other men.
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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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