Today’s passage from the writings
of Blessed Columba Marmion is taken from Union With God, Letters of
Spiritual Direction and the preceding commentary is provided by Dom Mark Kirby. Both capture for us the deep union that comes through suffering with and for Christ and how this suffering can bring about a renewal of the priesthood.
Sharing in the Passion of Christ
For the friend of
Christ, for the member of His Mystical Body, for one baptized into His saving
death, and nourished by the adorable Mysteries of His Body and Blood, suffering
is a means of union with Jesus, Priest and Victim. In His infinite wisdom, the
Father has reserved for each and every member of His Son’s Mystical Body a
certain portion of His Passion. Our Lord Jesus Christ asks His friends, one by
one, if they will allow Him to suffer in them, to complete His Passion in their
flesh and in their hearts.
The Holy Spirit
With suffering comes a great
anointing. He sends upon one who suffers with Him, and in whom He deigns to
suffer, the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, so that one may be able to suffer
joyfully and in the peace of a complete submission to the designs of His Sacred
Heart.
For Priests
Our Lord chooses to have need of our sufferings and
asks for them, in some instances, specifically for the renewal of the priesthood
in His Church, and for the spiritual regeneration of priests weakened by sin
and held in various forms of bondage to evil. To these souls, Our Lord says
that, by their humble participation in His Passion many priests will be healed
and purified and restored to holiness.
Freely Given
He does not inflict
suffering, but He humbly and meekly asks for our “Yes” to it. “Will you,” He
asks, “consent to this work of mine in you and through you?”
Victimhood
Blessed
Dom Marmion, formed by the contemplation of Love Crucified in his daily
Way of the Cross, never hesitated to invite souls who sought spiritual counsel
from him, to enter into the way of victimhood and to offer themselves to the
Father in the hands of Jesus, the Eternal High Priest. The sufferings involved
are not extraordinary tortures; they are the sufferings of the body, of the
heart, and of the soul that are woven into the fabric of every life. They are
the sufferings of the husband, wife, mother, child, sick person, and priest.
They are the sufferings of betrayal, abandonment, failure humiliation,
weakness, helplessness, pain, and uncertainty. And they are, all of them,
infinitely precious in the eyes of the Father when united to the Passion of His
Beloved Son.
Dom Marmion's Reflection
For what regards your weaknesses,
your failings, the Good God permits them in order to keep you in humility and
in the sense of your nothingness. God can always draw good from our miseries,
and when you have been unfaithful and have failed in confidence and in abandon
to His holy will, if you humble yourself deeply, you will lose nothing, but on
the contrary, you will advance in virtue and in the love of God.
If everything happened you just as
you could wish, if you were always in robust health, if all your exercises of
devotion were performed to your satisfaction, if you had no doubts and
uncertainties for the future, etc., with your character you would quickly
become full of self-sufficiency and secret pride; and instead of exciting the
bounty of the Father of Mercies and of drawing down His compassion on His poor
weak creature, you would be an abomination in God’s eyes. “Every proud man is
an abomination to the Lord. You must therefore set to work. Our Lord loves you
He sees into the depths of your soul, even into recesses hidden from yourself,
and He knows what you need; leave Him to act, and don’t try to make Our Lord
follow your way of seeing things, but follow His in all simplicity.
Uncertainty, anguish, disgust are
very bitter remedies necessary to the health of your soul. There is only one
road that leads to Jesus, namely that of Calvary; and whosoever will not follow
Jesus along upon this road must give up the thought of divine union. “If any
man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow
Me.”
Take courage! I have as much need
myself of these considerations as you have, for nature does not like sacrifice,
but the reward of sacrifice namely, the love of God, is so great, that we ought
to be ready to bear yet more in order to attain it.
