was a joy in itself to experience.
DO WHAT COMES TO HAND. Whatsoever thy hand finds to do, do it with all thy might. After all, God is with us. It shows too much conceit to trust to ourselves, to be discouraged at what we ourselves can accomplish. It is lacking in faith in God to be discouraged. After all, we are going to proceed with his help. We offer him what we are going to do. If he wishes it to prosper, it will. We must depend solely on him. Work as though everything depended on ourselves, and pray as though everything depended on God, as Saint Ignatius says. …
I suppose it is a grace not to be able to have time to take or derive satisfaction in the work we are doing. In what time I have, my impulse is to self-criticism and examination of conscience, and I am constantly humiliated at my own imperfections and at my halting progress. Perhaps I deceive myself here, too, and excuse my lack of recollection. But I do know how small I am and how little I can do and I beg You, Lord, to help me, for I cannot help myself.
IN A WAY your letter was very disquieting – you seemed so overcome by failure and defeat. You seem much under the influence of Péguy. I have been quoting that for years – “‘Where are the others?’ God will say” – and I do believe that we have to work for others. But we are sowing the seed and it is up to him to bring the increase. It is all in his hands, and we must keep ourselves in peace, first of all. That is where peace begins. He is our peace.
THIS MORNING the only gleam of consolation I had was that when God sends all these troubles and sufferings to the families, he is sending just what they need, to prune them down, so that they bear fruit. If I didn’t believe that, I’d be unhappy indeed. How he must love you to be so intent on sending what you need, spiritually. If all were going well and smoothly, it would be really dangerous.
TODAY THE ATMOSPHERE is very heavy. Rain threatens. So often one is overcome with a tragic sense of the meaninglessness of our lives – patience, patience, and the very word means suffering. Endurance, perseverance, sacrament of the present moment, the sacrament of duty. One must keep on reassuring oneself of these things. And repeat acts of faith. “Lord, I believe, help thou my unbelief.” We are placed here; why? To know him and so love him, serve him by serving others, and so attain to eternal life and joy, understanding, etc.
WE KNOW how powerless we are, all of us, against the power of wealth and government and industry and science. The powers of this world are overwhelming. Yet it is hoping against hope and believing, in spite of “unbelief,” crying by prayer and by sacrifice, daily, small, constant sacrificing of one’s own comfort and cravings – these are the things that count.
And old as I am, I see how little I have done, how little I have accomplished along these lines.
ONE TIME I was traveling and far from home and lonely, and I awoke in the night almost on the verge of weeping with a sense of futility, of being unloved and unwanted. And suddenly the thought came to me of my importance as a daughter of God, daughter of a king, and I felt a sureness of God’s love and at the same time a conviction that one of the greatest injustices, if one can put it that way, which one can do to God is to distrust his love, not realize his love. God so loved me that he gave his only begotten son. “If a mother will forget her children, never will I forget thee.” Such tenderness. And with such complete ingratitude we forget the Father and his love!
4
All Will Be Well
We boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
ROMANS 5:2–4
THE GRACE OF HOPE, this consciousness that there is in every person that which is of God, comes and goes in a rhythm like that of the sea. The Spirit blows where it listeth, and we travel through deserts and much darkness and doubt. We can only make that act of faith, “Lord, I believe, because I want to believe.” We must remember that faith, like love, is an act of the will, an act of preference. God speaks, he answers these cries in the darkness as he always did. He is incarnate today in the poor, in the bread we break together. We know him and each other in the breaking of bread.
I HAVE FALLEN IN LOVE many a time in the fall of the year. I mean those times when body and soul are revived and, in the keen clear air of autumn after a hot exhausting summer, I feel new strength to see, to “know” clearly, and to love, to look upon my neighbor and to love. Almost to be taken out of myself. I do not mean being in love with a particular person. I mean that quality of in-loveness that may brush like a sweet fragrance, a sound faintly heard, a sense of the beauty of one particular human being, or even one aspect of life. It may be an intuition of immortality, of the glory of God, of his presence in the world. But it is almost impossible to put into words. The point is that it is general rather than particular, though it may come as a reminder, this flash of understanding, of recognition, with the reading of a particular book, or hearing some strain of music.
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