OF SUFFERING WHICH MUST BE ACCEPTED AS FROM GOD--ITS FRUITS.
Be content with all the suffering that God may lay upon you. If you will
love Him purely, you will be as willing to follow Him to Calvary as to
Tabor.
He must be loved as much on Calvary as on Tabor, since it is there that
He makes the greatest manifestation of His love.
Do not act, then, like those people who give themselves at one time, and
take themselves back at another. They give themselves to be caressed,
and take themselves back when they are crucified; or else they seek for
consolation in the creature.
You can only find consolation in the love of the cross and in complete
abandonment. He who has no love for the cross has no love for God (see
Matt. xvi. 24). It is impossible to love God without loving the cross;
and a heart which has learned to love the cross finds sweetness, joy,
and pleasure even in the bitterest things. "To the hungry soul every
bitter thing is sweet" (Prov. xxvii. 7), because it is as hungry for the
cross as it is hungry for God.
The cross gives God, and God gives the cross. Abandonment and the cross
go together. As soon as you are sensible that something is repugnant to
you which presents itself to you in the light of suffering, abandon
yourself at once to God for that very thing, and present yourself as a
sacrifice to Him: you will see that, when the cross comes, it will have
lost much of its weight, because you will desire it. This will not
prevent your being sensible of its weight. Some people imagine that it
is not suffering to feel the cross. The feeling of suffering is one of
the principal parts of suffering itself. Jesus Himself was willing to
suffer it in its intensity.
Often the cross is borne with weakness, at other times with strength:
all should be equal in the will of God.