Patience
Thoughts on the Patient Endurance of Sorrows and Sufferings
THOUGHTS AND AFFECTIONS ON THE PASSION OF OUR LORD
[Continued from yesterday]
O King of glory, Jesus, my Saviour! what marvelous virtue Thou dost display in this flood of sorrows, sufferings, and humiliations, which overwhelmed Thy heart! What meekness, what resignation, what patience, what charity! Thou dost pray for those who torture Thee. Thou offerest Thy sufferings for those who persecute and afflict Thee.
How unlike I am to Thee, my divine Model!
How great is the change that must be effected in me, if I wish to be Thy true disciple and to bear a resemblance to Thee! In all sincerity, however, I pray: "Jesus, meek and humble of heart, make my heart like unto Thine."
How different a rule of life, how great a reform of conduct is required of me before I shall be able to say with the Apostle: "I live, now not I, but Christ liveth in me."
How unwilling I am to bear the slightest pain! How I shrink from the lightest cross! How impatient I am in sufferings, disappointments, and contradictions! And yet the Holy Spirit tells us, "Jesus Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, that we should follow His steps"; and again, "All that will live godly in Christ Jesus, shall suffer."
How the Apostles, the martyrs, and all the saints have suffered! But they entered with firm tread the grotto of the agony and stood bravely by the cross. They rejoiced in suffering and persecution because they became thereby more like to Christ; they bore in mind that great and abundant merit is attached to patient endurance of trials; they remembered that those who suffer with Christ, those who tread courageously the royal road of the cross to Calvary, shall also ascend with Him to heaven and reign with Him in immortal glory.
Henceforth I will look upon pains and sufferings and humiliations as blessings sent me from Heaven as a means to make me become more Christlike, to atone for my sins, to wean me from the love of self and the gratification of my passions, to teach me the vanity of the world, to lead me to greater perfection - in a word, to make me a saint. I will remember my Saviour's words: "If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily and follow Me."
(Luke ix. 23).
I will accept with resignation and bear with patience every cross that comes to me, mindful of the Apostle's words, "We know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good" (Rom. iii. 28).
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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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