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Gospel: Saint Matthew
17: 1-9
On Spiritual Consolation
18.1
First Point
When temptations and
interior trials have been endured patiently, God ordinarily encourages a
pure soul with spiritual consolation. The way God gives us this and the way
we should respond when we experience it is brought home to us in today's
Gospel, which tells about Our Lord's transfiguration. This is a symbol of
the spiritual consolation which God sometimes gives to souls who lead a
truly interior life.
The Gospel
tells us that Our Lord was transfigured while praying on a very high,
lonely mountain.[i]
This teaches us that God pours out his consolation on souls who devote
themselves a great deal to prayer and who love this holy exercise.
Those souls
who are half-hearted and lazy, who have little love for prayer, should not
be surprised if they are not among those whom God favors in a special way,
with whom he communicates himself familiarly. They do not enjoy an intimate
union with him, because they do not give themselves to the exercise that
unites us with God, in which we learn to enjoy God and to have even on this
earth a foretaste of the joy of heaven.
Be faithful
to this holy exercise so that all your actions may be done in the spirit of
prayer.
18.2 Second Point
God is pleased to unite
himself intimately with pure souls who have no attachment to sin. Still, he
does not wish them to become too strongly attached to his gifts, for this
attachment in a soul is a defect that displeases him, because it shows that
the soul is not seeking God himself, but the gift of God and its own
satisfaction.
This is why,
when God makes use of consolation to strengthen souls and to give them a
chance to rest a little after undergoing trials and tribulations, they
should accept this little refreshment with a simple view of God's good
pleasure, without being complacent about the personal enjoyment they find
there.
The three
apostles who accompanied Jesus Christ on Mt. Tabor lacked this balance.
Unfamiliar with God's ways, they were more eager to prolong the delight they
were enjoying in this mystery than to contemplate God's greatness and
goodness, which on this occasion should have filled their minds and absorbed
all their attention. As a result the exterior glory of Jesus Christ
vanished in a moment and disappeared from their sight.[ii]
That is
God's way. He deprives us of the sensible pleasure found in consolation when
we are too attached to it and enjoy it with too much self-satisfaction.
18.3 Third Point
Jesus' transfiguration
lasted only a short time. This shows us that the consolations which God
sometimes allows in this life are only a respite he sends to holy souls in
the midst of their interior desolation, to help them endure these trials
with more courage, and to augment their affection, which sometimes slackens
off because of the weakness of nature.
Hardly had
Jesus Christ enjoyed a moment of consolation in his transfiguration when
he found himself once more alone,[iii]
deprived of everything, and with no thought of anything other than of the
torments he would have to undergo in Jerusalem,[iv]
of which he had conversed with Moses and Elias, and which had been
the subject of his conversation with his disciples as they came down from
the mountain.[v]
We can understand from
this that passing consolations should help us stir up our courage and
confirm us in the love of suffering and the love of interior and exterior
trials, from which we must not expect to be exempt in this life.
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