Thoughts on the Patient Endurance of Sorrows and Sufferings
PRAYERNo duty is more insisted on in Holy Scripture than that of prayer. But you say you cannot pray much when weak and in pain. Remember, then, the paths of prayer.
Prayer is an offering to God, rising like clouds of incense before His throne above. And that offering goes by the path of words and thoughts, by the path of toil, and also by the path of pain and weariness. One is as good as another, provided it be pointed out by the finger of God as the path by which He desires your offering to ascend.
The blind fiddler earning coppers by the roadside, the poor patient on a bed of pain - these may be leading lives of continued and beautiful prayer, as truly as the cloistered religious who remains on bended knee for hours day by day. Believe this and act upon it; take it deeply to heart at this time; let it console and encourage you. Qui laborat orat - "he that works also prays" - is an old and true maxim. "He that suffers wi th patience and resignation prays continually and well."
Probably no period of your life has been more full of merit and given more glory to God, or been so full of true prayer and done so much for sinners, as the days of your sickness.
Offer your sufferings to God for the intentions of the Holy Father. Your prayer of pain at every moment brings down graces on this poor world, by which souls are helped and saved, and all the while is registering a hundred-fold reward for you hereafter.
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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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