One Must Love Occasions for Virtue, Especially Difficult Ones

You must by no means, beloved, flee from what can serve as an occasion for acquiring virtue; on the contrary, you ought always to welcome such occasions with joy whenever something of this sort presents itself, counting as most honorable and worthy of love those occasions that are unpleasant to your heart and stir no sympathy in you. I foretell to you that, with God’s help, you will indeed act this way, if you firmly impress the following thoughts upon your mind.

“First,” you must understand that the occasions for virtue that come your way are the most fitting means for acquiring it, given to you by God in response to your prayer. Having desired to acquire virtue, you surely prayed to God to grant it to you; and in praying for this, you could not but also pray for the means and circumstances through which such a gift might be obtained. But God does not give, for example, the virtue of patience without afflictions, or the virtue of humility without humbling occasions of abasement and dishonor. Therefore, after you had prayed for these virtues, he sent you occasions corresponding to them. What then are you doing when you flee and turn away from them? You are rejecting the help of God for which you prayed, and mocking the gift of God.

Therefore resolve to welcome gladly the occasions for virtue that present themselves to you—and the more gladly, the greater the difficulty they put you in. For in such occasions our virtuous acts call forth greater courage and manifest greater moral strength; and through this we each time make a more significant step along the path of virtue, which is the one thing we must always keep as our goal.

I must add, however, that in advising you to make use especially of important occasions for virtue, I do not mean to suggest that you should despise lesser occasions and pass them by with negligence. No, one must make unfailing use of both, so as to be always at work in doing good. For example, one must patiently endure not only outright insults, contempt, and even blows if it comes to that, but also a sideways glance, a contemptuous expression, or a cutting word. Our proper conduct in such lesser occasions, having more opportunity to manifest itself since such occasions are more numerous, keeps our moral strength in continual exercise and thereby strengthens us to conduct ourselves as we ought in more important occasions as well. By carelessly passing over such occasions, we weaken our moral strength and make it less capable of important acts.

“Second,” establish in yourself the conviction and faith that everything that happens to us happens by God’s will, for our benefit, so that we may receive some spiritual fruit through it. Although of some things—namely, our own sins and those of others—one cannot suppose that they come from God’s active will, they certainly do not occur without God’s permissive will, for our correction and humiliation. As for afflictions and sufferings, whether brought about by our own fault or by the malice of others, God himself sends them, desiring that we should be tried and suffer in them—for the sake of acquiring the good of virtue, which we will surely obtain if we rightly endure what he has sent us—and for other reasons known to him alone, hidden from us yet undoubtedly just and blessed.

Being thus assured that God himself wills you to bear the burden and sorrow that has come upon you—whether it arose from the unkindness of others or was brought upon you by your own wrongdoing—you will no longer think and say, as some do: no, this is not from God; it is unjust and wicked, and God does not desire wickedness and turns away in disgust from it and from those who do it. By this they seek to justify their impatience and their impulses of anger and vengefulness when they encounter injustice; but all they do is rise up against God’s decree and attempt to throw off the saving cross that God has laid upon them for their own good—a cross which, by taking it up and bearing it with good cheer, they would undoubtedly have pleased him. And what do they gain? They do not throw off the cross, they offend God, and yet they find no peace for themselves; on the contrary, they add to their sorrow disquiet and useless irritation, and make their condition unbearable—whereas if they had borne what befell them with good cheer, they would have kept their peace, drawn God’s favor upon themselves, and tasted rich spiritual fruit. Take for yourself from this a lesson: when you encounter injustice, insults, and attacks, do not dwell on how wrong those who caused them are, but fix your attention on this one thing—that God has permitted you to encounter this for your own good, and that you will deprive yourself of this good if you allow impatience, irritation, and disquiet on this account. And do not try to discover exactly why God permitted this to happen to you. Do you believe that God is always just and merciful? Then believe that in the present case as well he is showing justice and mercy toward you, even though you do not see how—remembering the Lord’s blessing upon those who act thus: ”blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29).

Do you believe that the words of the Lord apply to you personally: ”take up your cross” (Matt. 16:24)? If you believe it, then take it up. The Lord has now laid it upon you in this present affliction. Do not say: it is too heavy; God knows the measure of your strength better than you do. To some he sends afflictions and sorrows brought about by the course of events and not at all dependent on people—these are easier to bear. To others he sends those caused by people—these are harder, especially when the grief inflicted cannot be considered unintentional, and still more so when those people have in some way been shown kindness by us. The last case is the hardest of all. If this is what God has sent you, know that it is precisely the most fitting for you—and add to this the encouraging thought: God sees that you are strong enough to bear this, and expects that you will indeed bear it with good cheer and without complaint. Do not fall short of God’s expectation of you.

I will add further that God loves it when we bear more readily those afflictions that arise from the unkindness of people—especially those who have been shown kindness by us—than those that arise from unfavorable circumstances that seem to accumulate from nowhere. Why? Because the pride that is characteristic of us is more effectively suppressed and uprooted by the former than by the latter. And also because, if submission to God’s will is the chief thing in our spiritual activity, nowhere can we evoke and manifest it in ourselves to such a degree as in such occasions—if we bear them with good cheer, with warm gratitude to God who sent them to us as a truly great good, thereby bearing witness both to our complete surrender to God’s will and to our burning zeal to conform ourselves to that will in all things.

Such a state of soul precedes the sending of severe trials. God, seeing the birth of this state and wishing to raise it to full strength and to root it, sends the cup of the most powerful temptations; the willing, cheerful, and joyful endurance of which always genuinely yields such good spiritual fruit. Therefore, knowing this and desiring and seeking it, we must receive such a cup from the hand of God—closing the eyes of curiosity and with full faith clearly beholding in it both God’s fervent love for us and our sure spiritual progress—and drink it to the dregs with joy, the more eagerly the more bitterly it is felt.