You distress yourself sometimes, poor thing! because amongst those who
surround you, there are one or two who worry and annoy you. They do not
like you, find fault with everything you do, they meet you with a severe
countenance and austere manner, you think they do you harm, you look upon
them as obstacles to your doing good.
Your life passes away saddened and faded, and gradually you become
disheartened. Courage! instead of vexing yourself, thank GOD; these very
persons are the means of preserving you from humiliating faults, perhaps
even greater sins.
It is like the blister the doctor applies, to draw out the inflammation
that would kill.
GOD sees that too much joy, too much happiness, procured by those little
attentions for which you are so eager, would make you careless and
slothful in prayer; too much affection would only enervate, and you would
cling too much to earthly things; so in order to preserve your heart in
all its tenderness and simplicity, He plants there a few thorns, and cuts
you off from all the pleasures you fancy yours by right. GOD knows that
too much praise would cause pride, and make you less forbearing to others,
and so He sends instead humiliations. Let them be, then, these persons who
unconsciously are doing GOD'S work within you.
If you cannot love them from sympathy, love with an effort of the will,
and say to GOD, "My GOD, grant that without offending Thee, they may work
my sanctification. I have need of them."