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 grace to live with God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in my heart, to take trustful refuge to Him in instant prayer, to find my joy and strength in dwelling ever with Him as the Sweet Guest of my soul. Thus it will be easy for me quite spontaneously to see His hand of love in all that befalls me and to accept even the sharpest thorns with joy in my heart. This alone, indeed, may not be sensible, it may not lessen the intensity of the suffering, but it will help me to realize that God always gives the grace necessary to bear the sufferings of the present, and that when the future shall have become the present He will pour out a new measure of grace from the tabernacle of my heart where He has set His abode. Help me to live in the present, with no thought of the greatness of pain that is past, and still less preoccupied with what my loving Father may be pleased to send me in the future. I also recommend to you the special intentions for which I am making this Novena…. God will refuse you nothing.

Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory be.

Other Novena Prayers on page 46.



(1) —Love, and love alone, love at white heat, can give the only adequate solution of the paradox of St. Therese's joy in suffering, for "love is strong as death." As she herself wrote: "Love can do ALL things; even the most impossible tasks seem to it sweet and easy." She reflected long and deeply on the immensity and tenderness of God's fatherly love for her, a love so great that she thought it was not possible for God to love a creature more than He loved her, a love, wholly unmerited on her part and which for that reason she delighted to call "the mercies of the Lord." Then, realizing that "love is repaid by love alone," she thirsted to love God as much as He loved her, and seeing that this would be utterly impossible, unless she could find a means of borrowing His very love, with which to love Him in return, it was precisely this that she