UNION OF OUR WILL WITH GOD’S PERMISSIVE WILL IN THE TRIALS OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE BY RESIGNATION
Love of the cross makes us take up any voluntary sacrifices such as fasting, vigils, hair shirts, and other bodily mortifications. It makes us give up pleasures, honours and riches. The love found in these practices is more pleasing to the Beloved [God]. However, it is all the more pleasing when we accept toils, troubles, trials patiently, gently, calmly in accordance with God’s will who sends them to us. But love is at its highest, when we accept afflictions, not only with gentleness, and patience but when we cherish them, love them and embrace them. It is because they come to us through God’s permissive will.
Among all the efforts of perfect love undoubtedly that which is made by the acceptance of the spirit in the spiritual trials is the highest and most lofty. The Blessed Angela of Foligno gives an excellent description of the inner anguish she sometimes felt. Her soul suffered, she says, “like a man bound hand and foot hanging by the neck, half strangled, between life and death , all hope of rescue lost." He was unable to support himself by his feet or help himself by his hands, cry for help, scarcely able to sigh or groan. It is thus, Theotimus, that the soul is sometimes hard pressed to such an extent by inward trials. As a result, all its faculties and powers are oppressed through being deprived of all possible relief and through being aware and afraid of all that makes it sad. So, in imitation of our Saviour, the soul begins to be greatly troubled, to fear, to suffer dread and to feel sad with a sadness like that of the dying. The soul says: My soul is ready to die with sorrow (Mk 14: 33, 34; Mt 26: 37-39). With the consent of the whole interior the soul desires, asks, and pleads: that if it be possible, this chalice might pass by. Nothing is left, except the soul’s very peak, its apex. It alone remains attached to the heart of God and to his permissive will. The soul says in simple submission: Only as thy will is, eternal Father, not as mine is (Lk 22: 42).
What is important is the fact that the soul makes this resignation to God’s will in the midst of so many distresses, so many obstacles, and so much reluctance that it is scarcely aware of it. At least it seems so lifeless as if it is made grudgingly and unbecomingly. What occurs then is that God’s will is done not only without pleasure and contentment but against all pleasure and contentment in all the rest of the heart. Love allows the heart to lament at least for the fact that it cannot lament. Love utters all the lamentations of Job and Jeremiah, provided that the virtue of submission is always made in the depth of the soul, at its apex, in its noblest and highest point of the spirit. Such submission is neither loving nor sweet nor perceptible, although it is genuine, steady, unconquerable and heartfelt. It seems to withdraw to the farthest end of the spirit as into the centre of the fortress where it maintains its courage, even though all the rest of the soul is seized and oppressed by sorrow. In such a circumstance love is deprived of all help and abandoned by every assistance to the soul’s powers and faculties. Moreover it is to be esteemed for remaining so faithful always.
This union and conformity with God’s permissive will is achieved either by holy resignation or by holy indifference. The practice of resignation involves effort and compliance. We would prefer to live rather than die. Since it is God’s permissive will that we die, we must yield to it. We would like to live if that were pleasing to God. Moreover, we would like it to be pleasing to God to make us live. We die with a sincere heart although we would more willingly pass away with God; but we would be much happier to stay alive. In his trials, Job made the act of resignation: Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad? (Job 2:10). Shall we not receive the pains and toils he sends to us? Theotimus, note how Job speaks of sustaining, supporting and putting up with the sufferings. As it has pleased the Lord, so it has been done: blessed be the name of the Lord (Job 1:21). These are the words of resignation and acceptance by way of suffering and patience.