Salesian Literature

Chapter 12  :  The will’s most lovable death

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What happens when a man is weighed down by inner trials?  Though he is quite capable of believing in, hoping in, and loving God; though he actually does so – yet he is too weak to be aware of it.  So powerfully does his distress engross and overwhelm him, he cannot come to himself, to see what he is about.  For this reason he imagines he has neither faith, hope, nor charity, but only shadows, useless impressions of these virtues, which he feels almost without being aware of them, which seem foreign, not familiar to his soul.

 

This is the sort of thing the soul goes through in the event of spiritual distress.  Such experience makes love more genuine, more sincere; by taking away the pleasure which could rivet us to God, it joins and unites us to God directly, will to will, heart to heart, with no intervention of gratification or anticipated reward.

 

Yet how distressful for the heart of a man, seemingly forsaken by love, to seek it everywhere and apparently fail to discover it.  So it was that Mary Magdalene, when she met her Master, drew no comfort from his presence; she had no idea that it was he, but thought she was merely looking at the gardener (cf. Jn. 20:15).

 

What is one to do in these circumstances?  The soul can no longer bear up under such distress; all it can bring itself to do is let its will expire in the hands of God’s will, in imitation of our gentle Jesus.  When his sufferings on the cross reached the limits appointed by the Father, when he could no longer endure the intensity of his torments, he imitated the deer – out of breath an pursued by the pack, it surrenders to the huntsman, its eyes filled with tears, a final cry upon its lips.  Our Lord was at the point of death, breathing his last, when he cried with a loud voice and many tears: Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit (Lk. 23:46).  It was his last word; it was the supreme proof of the beloved Son’s love for his Father.

 

When all else fails us, then, when we are at the end of our tether, that word, those dispositions, that surrender of our souls into the Saviour’s hands can never fail.

 

The Son commended his spirit to the Father in his final unequalled death-throes; and we, when the turmoil of spiritual anguish deprives us of all relief, of all ability to hold out – we are to commend our spirits into the hands of this eternal Son, our true Father.  Then, bowing our heads (cf. Jn. 19:30) in compliance with his sweet will, we are to give our entire wills into his keeping.

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