persuaded that whatever he does, he does for our good, and because he loves us. Many things appear to us to be misfortunes, and we call them misfortunes; but if we understood the end for which God sends them, we should see that they are graces. It appeared a calamity to King Manasses to be deprived of his kingdom, and to be made a slave of the prince of the Assyrians: but these misfortunes were blessings; for after his downfall he returned to God, and did penance for the wickedness of his life. And after that he was in distress, he prayed to the Lord his God; and did penance exceedingly before the God of his fathers. We labor under a vertigo, and therefore many things appear to us to go to ruin; and we know not that it is our giddy head that makes them appear to us different from what they are in reality. Such a nun may say: How does it happen that everything goes astray with me? No, sister, but you go astray: your will is crooked; for all that happens comes from God. He does all for your welfare, but you know it not.
And whom can we ever find more solicitous for our welfare and for our salvation than God? To make us understand this truth, he likens himself at one time to a shepherd, going through the desert in search of his lost sheep; at another to a mother who cannot forget her own child. Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb. Again, to a hen gathering and sheltering her chickens under her wings, that they may suffer no injury: Jerusalem, Jerusalem, . . . how often would I have gathered together thy children, as the hen doth gather her chickens under her wing, and thou wouldst not. In a word,
