Evil and Its Remedy

Is your earth, then, a place of joy, a paradise of delights? Does not the voice of the prophet resound any longer in your ears? Did he not proclaim that there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth for those who are born into this valley of pain? You who have gone to live there must therefore expect burning tears and bitter suffering, but no matter how acute and deep your suffering may be, look up to heaven and bless the Lord for having willed to test you! ... O people! Do you acknowledge power of your Master only when he has healed the sores of your body and crowned your days with beatitude and joy? Do you acknowledge his love only when he has adorned your body with all sorts of glories and has restored its brilliance and purity? You must imitate the one who was given to you as the example. Having reached the ultimate degree of abjection and misery, and while laying upon the dung heap, he said to God, “Lord, I have known all the joys of opulence and you have reduced me to the most absolute misery; thank you, thank you, my God,

for having willed to test your servant so!” How long will your gaze remain fixed upon the horizons limited by death? When will your soul finally desire to leap beyond the limits of the grave? Even if you had to weep and suffer an entire lifetime, what would that be when compared to the eternal glory reserved for those who have endured their trials with faith, love and resignation? So seek consolation  for your ills in the future that God has prepared for you, and seek the cause of your ills in the past. And you, who suffer the most, consider yourselves the blessed of this earth.

In your state as discarnates, when you were gliding through space, you yourselves chose your trial because you believed you were strong enough to bear it. So why complain now? You who asked for riches and glory, it was for bearing the struggle of temptation and overcoming it. You who asked to struggle in body and soul against moral and physical evil, it was because you knew that the harder the trial the greater and more glorious the victory would be, and that if you emerged triumphant, even if your body were thrown onto a dung heap, at death it would release a soul with unblemished radiance, made pure by the baptism of expiation and suffering.

What  remedy, therefore, is recommended for those who are attacked by cruel obsessions and excruciating  ills? Only one is infallible: faith, turning your gaze toward heaven. If in the turmoil of your cruelest suffering your voice would sing to the Lord, the angel at your bedside would show you the sign of salvation and the place you will someday occupy ... Faith is the sure remedy for suffering; it always points to the horizons of the infinite, before which the few dark days of the present are erased. Therefore, do not ask us what remedy should be employed to remedy this ulcer or that sore, this temptation or that trial. Remember that those who believe are strengthened by the remedy of faith, and those who doubt its effectiveness even for one second are immediately punished, because they experience in the same instant the pungent anguish of affliction.

The Lord has set his seal upon all those who believe in him. Christ told you that with faith you can move mountains, and I say to you that those who suffer and have faith as a support will be placed under his watch-care and will suffer no more. The moments of greatest pain will be for them the first happy notes of eternal joy. Their soul will disengage itself from the body in such a way that, while the body is still writhing in convulsions, it will be gliding through the heavenly regions, singing with the angels hymns of thanksgiving and glory to the Lord.

Happy are they who suffer and weep! May their souls rejoice, for God will fill them with blessing.

St. Augustine (Paris, 1863.)