will strike, and I will heal.”[1] But the most terrible of all his woes is that the sinner shall then be abandoned by God Himself; and therefore the death of the sinner is a misery in which there is no help or comfort from God, as we shall see in the
Second Part.
The worst suffering is to suffer without God. Suffering, no matter how great, is tolerable, nay, even grows sweet when ne has God as a Companion and Comforter. Such was the case with Job in his great affliction, David in the midst of his enemies, Daniel amongst the raging lions, Joseph in the hands of his brethren, Lazarus in his poverty, Paul in the most violent persecutions, Lawrence on the gridiron, the martyrs in their torments. What did their sufferings matter to them? All they had to do to comfort themselves was to remember the words of the Lord: “I am with him in his trouble,”[2] and they were able to laugh and rejoice in the midst of their tortures. Say to some pious servant of God: your father, your mother, your friends have abandoned you; be it so, he will answer quite composedly; “the Lord hath taken me up,”[3] and that suffices for me. Hence there have been many servants of God (and there are such still) who congratulated themselves as on a piece of unexpected good luck when assailed by tribulation, who prayed to God most earnestly for the cross, and complained when it was taken away from them. St. Teresa preferred to die rather than to be without suffering.[4] Oh, to suffer with God is a sweet suffering! Even death itself, terrible as it is, has no terrors for the just man who has God at his side. Let whole legions of demons surround his bed, as some holy hermits have experienced in their last hour, he will not fear: “For though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death,” he will think and say with the Psalmist, “I will fear no evils: for Thou art with me.”[5] But to suffer without God, to endure anguish without God, to be in the hands of the devils without God; that is the greatest and most terrible of all suffering! The human mind can do without all created comfort, and without any help from creatures; but to be excluded from the comfort and help that God can give is that wo which the Lord threatens the
- ↑ Videte quod ego sim solus, et non sit alius Deus præter me; ego occidam, et ego vivere faciam; percutiam, et ego sanabo.—Deut. xxxii. 39.
- ↑ Cum ipso sum in tribulatione.—Ps. xc. 15.
- ↑ Dominus assumpsit me.—Ibid. xxvi. 10.
- ↑ Aut pati, aut mori.
- ↑ Et si ambulavero in medio umbræ mortis, non timebo mala, quoniam tu mecum es.—Ps. xxii. 4.
