Patience - January 16

Patience
Thoughts on the Patient Endurance of Sorrows and Sufferings

PARADISE
[...continued from yesterday]


Paradise! Paradise! - this is in store for you. Give to God every twinge of pain, every dark hour, every feeling of desolation. All are precious and have a bearing on your eternity. God values them all and will reward them liber­ally.

The end will come and all things be made new, when you shall "enter into the joy of your Lord," if in life you have weaned yourself from all love "of the world and of the things which are in the world," if you have been "rich towards God," and "brought forth fruit in patience."

In heaven there is an absence of all pain. "The former things are passed away," "the voice of weeping is not heard," for "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."

All this is much and splendid, but it is only a glimpse. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him."

Yet, surely, what we know is enough to encourage us and to draw us to God.

We must fight the good fight on whatever bat­tlefield our Lord has placed us, and fight to the end, for only such are crowned. "Be thou faith­ful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life."
Per crucem ad lucem - no cross, no crown.(1)

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r,
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er gave,
Await alike the inevitable hour.
The paths of glory lead but to the grave.
-Gray.

(1) End of Excerpts (adapted) from "One Hundred Read­ings" by Rev. Robert Eaton.
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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