Woes? Setbacks deriving from one thing or another? Can't you see
that this is the will of your Father God, who is good and who loves you -
loves you personally - more than all the mothers in the world can
possibly love their children? (The Forge, 929)
But do not forget that being with Jesus means we shall most
certainly come upon his Cross. When we abandon ourselves into God’s
hands, he frequently permits us to taste sorrow, loneliness, opposition,
slander, defamation, ridicule, coming both from within and from
outside. This is because he wants to mould us into his own image and
likeness. He even tolerates that we be called lunatics and be taken for
fools.
This is the time to love passive mortification which comes,
hidden perhaps or barefaced and insolent, when we least expect it. They
can even go so far as to strike the sheep with the very stones that
should have been thrown at the wolves: the follower of Christ
experiences in his own flesh that those who have a duty to love him,
treat him instead in ways that range from mistrust to hostility, from
suspicion to hatred. They look upon him with misgiving, as if he were a
liar, because they do not believe it is possible to have personal
dealings with God, an interior life; and all the while, with atheists
and those who are indifferent to God (people who are usually impertinent
and rude), they behave in a most amicable and understanding manner.
Our
Lord may even allow his followers to be attacked with a weapon that
never does honour to its user, the weapon of personal insult; or to be
subjected to a smear campaign, the tendentious and indictable result of a
massive campaign of lies: for not everyone is endowed with a sense of
fairness and good taste.
This is the way Jesus fashions the souls
of those he loves, while at the same time never failing to give them
inner calm and joy, because they are fully aware that, even with a
hundred lies, the devils are incapable of making a single truth; and he
impresses on them a living conviction that they will only find comfort
when they make up their minds to do without it. (Friends of God, 301)
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