If sufferings are allowed by such a Good Father, why should we be afraid of it?

January 8, 2022 • 2 min

From The Sinner’s Guide, page 444
By Venerable Louis of Granada

Section X.

Patience in Afflictions.

To arrive at perfect obedience to God’s will there is no more efficacious means than patience under sufferings of every kind.

“My son,” says Solomon, “reject not the correction of the Lord, and do not faint when thou art chastised by Him; for whom the Lord loveth He chastiseth, and as a father in the son He pleaseth Himself.” [Prov. iii. 11, 12.]

St. Paul quotes these words and develops them at considerable length in his Epistle to the Hebrews: [xii. 7, 8, 9.] “Persevere,” he says, “under discipline. God dealeth with you as with His sons, for what son is there whom the father doth not correct? But if you be without chastisement, whereof all are made partakers, then are you bastards, and not sons. Moreover, we have had fathers of our flesh for instructors, and we reverenced them. Shall we not much more obey the Father of spirits, and live?”

Since, then, it is the duty of a good father to correct and reprove his children, it is the duty of a good son patiently to endure the correction, and accept it as a proof of love.

This is the lesson which the Son of the Eternal Father taught when He said to St. Peter: “The chalice which My Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?” [St. John xviii. 11.]

Were the chalice of suffering offered us by another hand we might with reason refuse it; but the knowledge that it is sent by the wisest and tenderest of fathers should suffice to make us accept it without hesitation.