All the suffering God allows us, is for our own good, and comes from his Love and Mercy
2 min • Digitized on January 9, 2022
From The Sinner’s Guide, page 445
By Venerable Louis of Granada
Consider also the different effects of prosperity and adversity. The former inflates us with pride; the latter humbles and purifies us.
In prosperity we often forget to whom we owe all that we are; but adversity usually brings us to the feet of our Creator.
Prosperity often causes us to lose the fruits of our best actions; but adversity enables us to expiate our past failings, and preserves us against future relapses.
If you are afflicted by sickness, consider that God has doubtless permitted this to preserve you from the abuse you might have made of your health; for it is better to languish under bodily sufferings than gradually to destroy the life of the soul by sin.
Certainly God, Who is so merciful, takes no pleasure in our afflictions, but in His love He sends us these necessary remedies to cure our infirmities.
Thus suffering purifies the stains of sinful pleasures, and the privation of innocent gratifications expiates unlawful indulgence.
He punishes us in this world, that He may reward us in the next; He treats us with merciful rigor here to save us from His wrath in eternity.
Hence St. Jerome says that God’s anger against sinners is never more terrible than when He seems to forget them during life. It was through fear of such a misfortune that St. Augustine prayed: “Here, O Lord! burn, here cut, that Thou mayst spare me in eternity.”
Behold how carefully God guards you, that you may not abandon yourself to your evil inclinations.
When a physician finds the condition of his patient hopeless he indulges him in all his caprices, but while there is any hope of recovery he rigidly restricts him to a certain diet and forbids him all that could aggravate his malady.
In like manner parents refuse their children the money they have accumulated only for them when they find they are squandering it in play and riotous living.
Thus are we treated by God, the sovereign Physician and most loving Father of us all, when He sends us trials and privations.