Many of the saints, and especially St. Catherine of Siena, St. Philip Neri,
and St. Ignatius Loyola, have spoken in the most beautiful and elevated
language of that holy indifference which, springing from the love of God,
makes life or death and all the circumstances of the one or the other
equally acceptable to the soul which realizes that all is ordered by the
will of God.
Let us hear what our Blessed Father says on this subject in his _Treatise
on the Love of God_.
"God's will is the sovereign object of the indifferent soul; wheresoever
she sees it she runs after the odour of its perfumes, directing her course
ever thither where it most appears, without considering anything else. She
is conducted by the divine will, as by a beloved chain; which way soever it
goes she follows it: she would prize hell with God's will more than heaven
without it; nay, she would even prefer hell before heaven if she perceived
only a little more of God's good-pleasure in that than in this, so that
if--to suppose what is impossible--she should know that her damnation would
be more agreeable to God than her salvation, she would quit her salvation
and run to her damnation."[1]
This is, indeed, a bold and daring proposition, but to convince you
how tenaciously he clung to it I would remind you of his words in the
Conferences;[2] on the same subject: "The saints who are in heaven are so
closely united to the will of God that if there were even a little more of
His good-pleasure in hell than in paradise they would quit paradise to go
there." And again in the same Conference: "Whether the malady conquers the
remedies or the remedies get the better of the malady should be a matter
of perfect indifference. So much so that if sickness and health were put
before us and our Lord were to say to us: 'If thou choose health I will not
deprive thee of a single particle of my grace, if thou choose sickness I
shall not in any degree increase that grace, but in the choice of sickness
there is a little more of my good-pleasure,' the soul which has wholly
forsaken herself and abandoned herself into the hands of our Lord will
undoubtedly choose sickness solely because it is more pleasing to God. Nay,
though this might mean a whole lifetime spent on her couch in constant
suffering, she would not for any earthly consideration desire to be in any
other condition than this."
[Footnote 1: Bk. ix., c. 5.]
[Footnote 2: Conf. ii.]