When you, dear sister, are visited by God with any infirmity, or loss, or persecution, humble yourself, and say with the good thief, We receive the due reward of our deeds.[1] Lord, I deserve this cross because I have offended Thee. Humble yourself and be comforted: for the chastisement that you receive is a proof that God wishes to pardon the eternal punishment due to your sins. Who will grant me, says Job, . . . that this may be my comfort, that afflicting me with sorrow, he spare not[2] Let this be my consolation, that the Lord may afflict me and may not spare me here below in order to spare me hereafter. O God! how can he who has deserved hell complain if the Lord send him a cross. Were the pains of hell trifling, still, because they are eternal, we should gladly exchange them for all temporal sufferings that have an end. But no: in hell there are all kinds of pain — they are all intense and everlasting. And though you should have preserved baptismal innocence and have never deserved hell, you have at least merited a long purgatory: and do you know what purgatory is? St. Thomas says that the souls in purgatory are tormented by the very fire that tortures the damned. Hence St. Augustine says that the pain of that fire surpasses every torment that man can suffer in this life.[3] Be content, then, to be chastised in this life rather than in the next; particularly since by accepting crosses with patience in this life your sufferings will be meritorious; but hereafter you will suffer without merit.
Console yourself also in suffering with the hope of paradise. St. Joseph Calasanctius used to say: " To
