Vigils Reading

THE JOY OF THE ONE WHO LIVES FOR GOD ALONE

From the letters of Saint Rafael Arnaiz5

◊◊◊

God alone. How difficult it is to understand and live these words, but once you do, even if just for a moment… there is nothing in the world that can trouble your soul… A great peace fills the hearts of those who live for God alone, and only those who desire God alone find peace…

He gives what the world and its creatures cannot. Our misery, forgetfulness, and ingratitude are covered with His infinite Mercy. The consolation that people so often deny us when we are in pain can be found in His cross, alone with Him on Calvary. The only Truth can be found in His Gospel, the words of eternal life. And as if that weren’t enough, everything else can be found in His Mother Mary…

Blessed are those who mourn, Jesus said on earth, by the water’s edge, and a crowd made up of the sick, the lame, the poor, and sinners followed Him. . . I believe that after turning toward Jesus, their faces, once tear stained from all their weeping, were transformed with joyful laughter, blessing their afflictions and miseries, which united them to Jesus. And Jesus looked at them with the tenderness that won over the world, and let Himself be loved by the poor, the afflicted, the sick, and sinners. And Jesus healed them, and Jesus consoled them, and Jesus forgave them…

What a great joy it is to realize you are beloved of God! To be counted among His friends, to follow Him step by step in Jerusalem with your eyes fixed on His divine countenance, blessing our own misery for having inspired Jesus to attract our gaze, so that He might reach our hearts, heal us, forgive us… and love us enough to die for us on a cross… That is true joy, the joy of the one who lives for God alone, who trusts in God alone, who hopes in God alone. And it is not a raucous joy; it is the serene joy of a soul who might still live on this earth, but expects nothing from this world. It is the joy of one who lives for Christ and dreams of Mary…

If the path proves difficult, or arduous, or long, it won’t matter, Jesus goes before us… We’ll press on, day or night, drunk with joy, utterly mad with it, not listening to the world… “God alone…” our heart will bellow… And that is how we shall keep our silence as we walk around in this world… Oh, we can indeed weep and suffer, but not because of our own crosses and sorrows, which are very small indeed, but rather… over how ungrateful we are toward Jesus, and how often we forget Mary… Mary. It wasn’t enough for God to give us His Son on a cross; He gave us Mary, too. How is it possible, brother, that we aren’t better than this?…

Neither the body, our soul’s prison, nor the world with all its creatures can damage the soul that hopes in God, no matter how harshly they chafe against it. We can conquer and disregard the body, and instead of fearing contact with creatures, love them, even searching them out in order to teach them the science that Christ taught us… love…

Let nothing trouble you, for He gives so much to the souls of His friends, only to have us shrug off the treasure that is Christ’s gentle yoke at every vain disturbance that life provides… God alone. Let us not grow tired of repeating it. If we were to take the intensity of the effort we put into earthly matters and put it into love for God instead… things would be different… With silence, prayer, and a whole lot of inner madness, we can wait well for what is to come… and it will all come