On Not Desiring Too Strongly to Be Freed From the Afflictions One Is Bearing, Surrendering Oneself Wholly to the Will of God

When you are in some affliction that you are bearing with thanksgiving, watch carefully lest the enemy or your self-love beguile you into desiring to be freed from it. For from this you will suffer two losses: the first is that although, having received such a desire and consented to it, you will not immediately lose the virtue of patience, you will nevertheless significantly shake it; and as it gradually weakens due to the non-fulfillment of the desire to be freed from the affliction you must bear, it will finally cast you into a state of impatience. The second is that from that moment your patience will begin to be compelled: but God loves and rewards a cheerful giver. Consequently, from that time on, although you will still endure—for the mere desire to be freed from affliction does not free one from it—yet your endurance will be without reward. God will requite you for bearing the affliction up to the hour when you endured it cheerfully, without seeking deliverance; but from the moment you received that desire, God will reward you nothing further for your unwilling endurance. On the contrary, if, repelling and suppressing the desire for deliverance from affliction that comes over you, you surrender yourself wholly to the good will of God, expressing readiness to bear willingly even a hundred times greater afflictions than the present one, should the Lord see fit to send them upon you, then—even if your present suffering lasts only an hour or even less—God will count it as the longest and will proportion his reward to you accordingly.

In the same way, in all other cases, do not give free rein to your desires, but keep them under your control, directing all of them exclusively toward one chief goal—to stand in the will of God and to walk according to the will of God. For then all your desires will be upright and devout, and in every unpleasant circumstance you will remain at peace, resting in God’s will. Sincerely believing that nothing can happen to you apart from God’s will, and desiring nothing except to remain in the active fulfillment of God’s will, you will, as is self-evident, always have only what you desire, whatever may at any time befall you.

By what I said—that nothing will happen to you without God’s will—I do not mean your own sins and the sins of others, since God does not desire sins; I mean the afflictions and necessities sent by God for our correction and instruction, or as punishment for our sins. These are beneficial for us and are rightly called the saving cross, which he frequently lays upon those closest to him—his beloved and chosen ones—and the bearing of which is above all else pleasing to him.

And what I said—do not desire to be freed from afflictions—understand properly, in the sense of submission to God’s will. We cannot but desire to be free from afflictions, for God himself has placed in our nature the desire for well-being, which is why he also saw fit to include in the prayer he himself composed for us: ”lead us not into temptation” (Matt. 6:13), which we repeat several times each day. If now, after such a prayer—heard, of course, by God—he nonetheless sends us affliction, it is plain that there is a special will of his for this, to which we, as his creatures who recognize our duty to submit to him in all things, must cheerfully submit, bearing what has been sent as something necessary for the salvation of precisely me and you. And even the prayer itself, ”lead us not into temptation,” pray with this understanding: ”not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39), imitating the Lord and Savior—that is, pray it not because you have an aversion to temptations and in no way desire them, but solely because the Lord commanded us to pray thus, while holding in your soul at the same time full readiness to receive cheerfully everything that God may see fit to send upon us, and without pandering to the self-loving desire for uninterrupted well-being, which cannot be had on earth, since it is the lot of the future eternal life.