THE CONSOLATION OF GOD.
The reason so many fail is
because they are not silent. Endurance depends much on silence. Power escapes
with words. It is only by the help of the grace of silence that the saints
carry such heavy crosses. A cross for which we have received sympathy is far
heavier than it was before, or it may be that the sympathy is far heavier than
it was before, or it may be that the sympathy has unnerved ourselves, so that
they weight seems greater, and the wound in our should sorer, Silence is the
proper atmosphere of the cross, and security its native climate. The best
crosses are secret ones, and we may be silent under those that are not secret.
Indeed, silence creates a sort of secrecy even in public. For at least we can
hide how much we suffer if we cannot hide altogether the fact that we are
suffering. We can conceal how often we are almost at the point of sinking beneath
our burden. We can keep to ourselves those individual particularities of
sufferings which are far its sharpest points, and which feed the sympathy of
others more than greater things can do In some way or other human sympathy
desecrates the operations of grace. It mingles a debasing element with that
which is divine. The Holy Spirit withdraws from tis company, because it is ‘of
the earth, earthly.”
The Comforter give His best
consolations only to the inconsolable of earth. They who seek creatures first,
must be content with creatures; for they will not find God afterward, let them
seek ever so much. They to whom God is not enough by Himself, but must have
comforting creatures mixed with Him, will never find our their sad mistake; for
to them God will never open those treasures which will show them how different
He is from creatures.
But all this is hard to nature.
Nature never yet breathed freely on the top of Calvary. Men do not take their
ease on mountain heights. They hardly rest there, except to admire the
magnificence of the view, because the breathing is so difficult. It is very
hard to put away all consolation from ourselves. Sympathy seems often to be
just that which makes our pain endurable. Well, then, let us go down a step
lower. Let us not put it away; but do not let us ask it. Let us find us without
our seeking. As the world goes, we shall not greatly peril what is divine in
our sorrows by, being simply passive about sympathy. But even this passiveness
is hard. How should it be anything else but hard when it is a part of our
crucifixion? It is Calvary’s hardest lesson.
But there is a true
consolation-deeply hidden, indeed, yet near at hand-in the falling away of
human consolation. It is in the darkness of nature that we realize the vicinity
of Jesus. It is in the absence of creatures that we are held up in the sensible
embrace of the Creator. Creatures bring obscurity with them wherever they
intrude. They are forever in our way, intercepting graces, hiding God,
defrauding us of spiritual consolations, making us languid and irritable. They
so fill our senses that the inner senses of our souls are unable to act. We
often wish our lives were more divine. Bu they are, in fact, much more divine
than we believe. It is sorrow which reveals this to us. It comes like a shroud
around us. But degrees our horizon narrows in, and our great world becomes a
little world. Onward still it creeps; first one object disappears and then
another. We are growing less and less distracted. Our inward life is more awake.
Our soul gets strong. Now the line of darkness has touched Jerusalem itself.
Even the consolations of he spiritual city have disappeared. The greenness of
the mountain grows black. For a moment it blinds us; then, by degrees, the
white Figure of Jesus comes out in the dim obscurity. We feel the warm Blood on
our hands as we grasp the cross. It is no apparition; it is life. We are with
God, with our Creator, with our Saviour. He is all our own. The withdrawal of
creatures has made Him so. But He has not come. He was always there-always thus
within our souls-only He was overpowered with the false brightness of
creatures. He comes out in the dark like the stars. The white moon of noonday
does not allure us by its beauty; it enchants us only in the night; so it is
the darkness of a spiritual Calvary which covers our souls with the soft
shining of our beautiful Saviour. –Faber.
