Voluntary Trials. True Sackcloth

26. You ask if it is permissible to mitigate your trials. This question leads to these: is it permissible for those who are drowning to save themselves? For those who have a thorn to remove it? For those who are ill to call a doctor? Trials are meant to engender intelligence as well as patience and resignation. Individuals may be born into a painful and difficult situation precisely to make them search for the means of overcoming it. The merit consists in bearing without complaint the consequences of the ills that cannot be avoided, in persevering in the struggle and in not becoming desperate if unsuccessful, but without giving into indifference, which would be laziness more than virtue.

This question of course leads to  another. Since Jesus said, “Blessed are the afflicted,” is there any merit in seeking afflictions, thereby increasing trials by means of  voluntary suffering? To this I will respond very clearly: yes, there is great merit if such suffering and privations are meant for the good of one’s neighbor, because it is charity through sacrifice; and no, if they are meant only for the good of oneself, because it results from selfishness through fanaticism.

A big distinction must be made here: as for you personally, be content with the trials that God sends you and do not increase their  burden,  which is often already so heavy. Accept them faithfully without complaining; that is all God asks of you. Do not weaken your body with useless privations and purposeless mortifications, because you have need of all your strength in order to fulfill your mission of labor on the earth. Intentionally torturing and martyring your body is an infringement of the law of God, who has given you the means of nourishing and strengthening it. To needlessly weaken it is true suicide. Use it but do not abuse it; such is the law. The abuse of the best things brings its punishment in unavoidable consequences.

The suffering that one imposes on oneself for the relief of one’s neighbor is something else. If you endure cold and hunger in order to warm and feed someone who is in need, and if your body suffers because of it, it is then a sacrifice that is blessed by God. You who leave your fragrant homes to go to an infected hovel to bring consolation; you who dirty your delicate hands to treat wounds; you who lose sleep to watch over the bedstead of a sick person, who is only your brother or sister in God; in short, you who use your health in the practice of good deeds: that is your sackcloth, the true sackcloth of blessing, for the pleasures of the world have not shriveled your heart. You have not slept in the bosom of the voluptuous enervations of wealth, but have made yourselves into consoling angels for the disinherited poor.

But you who retire from the world in order to avoid its seductions and to live in isolation, what is your usefulness? Where is your courage in trial, since you run from the struggle and desert the fight? If you want sackcloth, apply it to your soul and not your body. Mortify your spirit and not your flesh; whip your pride; receive humiliation without complaint; flog your selfishness; and harden yourselves against the pain of insult and slander, more pungent than bodily pain. This is true sackcloth, whose wounds will be taken into account because they will testify to your courage and submission to God’s will.

A Guardian Angel (Paris, 1863)