Trials

The following two quotes provide a perspective on trials. They are from the book, The Complete Fenelon, by Francois Fenelon (1651-1715), translated and edited by Robert J. Edmonson and Hal M. Helms.

An excerpt from Chapter 9: The Right Use of Trials

People find it very hard to believe that God heaps crosses on those he loves out of loving-kindness. “Why should he take pleasure in causing us to suffer?” they ask. “Could he not make us good without making us so miserable?” Yes, doubtless God could do so, for to him all things are possible. His all-powerful hands hold the human heart and turn it as he pleases, just as people who command the source of a reservoir turn the stream in whatever direction they desire. But though God could save us without crosses, he has not willed to do so, just as he has willed that people should grow up through the weakness and troubles of childhood, instead of being born fully developed. He is the Master; we can only be silent and adore his infinite wisdom without understanding it. The one thing we do see plainly is that we cannot become really good except in so far as we become humble, unselfish, in all things turning from self to God.

But as that grace operates, it cannot (except through a miracle of the same grace) be other than painful, and God does not perform continual miracles in the order of grace any more than in the order of nature. It would be as great a miracle to see a person full of self die suddenly to self-consciousness and self-interest as it would be to see a child go to bed a mere child and rise up the next morning thirty years old! God hides his work beneath a series of imperceptible events, both in grace and nature, and in this way he subjects us to the mysteries of faith. Not only does he accomplish his work gradually, but also he does it by the most simple and likely means, so that its success appears natural. Otherwise, all that God does would be like a perpetual miracle, and this would overthrow the life of faith by which he would have us exist.

Such a life of faith is necessary, not only to mold the good, by causing us to sacrifice our own reason amid a world of darkness, but also to blind those whose presumption misleads them. Such people see God’s works without comprehending them, and take them to be simply natural. They are without true understanding, since understanding is given only to those who mistrust their own judgment and the proud wisdom of humanity.

So it is to ensure that the operation of grace may remain a mystery of faith that God permits it to be slow and painful. He makes use of human inconstancy and ingratitude, and the disappointments and failures that attend human prosperity, to detach us from the created world and its good things. He opens our eyes by letting us realize our own weakness and evil through countless falls. All this seems to go on in the natural course of events, and this series of apparently natural causes consumes us like a slow fire. We would much rather be consumed at once by the flames of pure love, but so speedy a process would cost us nothing. It is utter selfishness that we desire to attain perfection so cheaply and so quickly. ■

An excerpt from Chapter 10: Prolonged Trials

Why do we rebel against our prolonged trials? Because of self-love; and it is that very self-love that God purposes to destroy. As long as we cling to self, his work is not achieved.

What right have we to complain? We suffer from an excessive attachment to the world—above all to self. God orders a series of events that detach us gradually from the world first, and finally from the self also. The operation is painful, but our corruption makes it needful. If the flesh were healthy, the surgeon would not need to probe it. He uses the knife only in proportion to the depth of the wound and the extent of proud flesh. If we feel his operation too keenly, it is because the disease is active. Is it cruelty that makes the surgeon probe us to the quick? No, far otherwise—it is skill and kindness; he would do the same with his only child.

This is how God treats us. He never willingly puts us to any pain. His fatherly heart does not desire to grieve us, but he cuts to the quick so that he may heal the ulcers of our spiritual being. He must tear from us what we love wrongly, unreasonably, or excessively, the thing that hinders his love. In so doing, he causes us to cry out like a child from whom one takes away a knife with which it could injure or kill itself. We cry loudly in our despair, and murmur against God, just as the petulant child murmurs against its mother. But he lets us cry, and saves us nevertheless!

God afflicts us only for our correction. Even when he seems to overwhelm us, it is for our own good, to spare us the greater evil we would do to ourselves. The things for which we weep would have caused us eternal distress. That which we count as loss was then indeed most lost when we fancied that it belonged to us. God has stored it up safely, to be returned to us in eternity. He deprives us of the things we prize only because he wants to teach us to love them purely, truly, and properly in order to enjoy them forever in his presence, and because he wants to do a hundred times better for us than we can even desire for ourselves.

Nothing can happen in the world except by God’s permissive will. He does everything, arranges everything, makes everything to be as it is. He counts the hairs of our head, the leaves of every tree, the sand on the seashore, the drops of water from the mighty ocean. When he made the world, his wisdom weighed and measured every atom. Every moment he renews and sustains the breath of life. He knows the number of our days; he holds the cords of life or death. What seems to us weightiest is as nothing in the eyes of God; a little longer or shorter life becomes an imperceptible difference before him. What does it matter whether this frail vessel, this poor clay, should be thrown aside a little sooner or later? How shortsighted and erring we are!
We are aghast at the death of one in the flower of his age. “What a sad loss!” we cry out. But to whom is the loss? What does the one who dies lose?—a few years of vanity, delusion, and peril. God takes that person away from the evil and saves that one from his own weakness and the world’s wickedness. What do they lose who love God?—the danger of earthly happiness, a treacherous delight, a snare that caused them to forget God and their own welfare. But in truth they gain the blessing of detachment through the cross. That same blow by which the one who dies is saved prepares those who are left to work out their salvation in hope. Surely, then, it is true that God is very good, very loving, very full of pity with regard to our real needs, even when he seems to overwhelm us and we are most tempted to call him hard.

The sensitiveness of self-love makes us keenly alive to our own condition. The sick person who cannot sleep thinks the night is endless, yet it is no longer than any other night. In our cowardice, we exaggerate all we suffer. Our pain may be severe, but we make it worse by shrinking under it. The real way to get relief is to give ourselves up heartily to God, to accept suffering because God sends it to purify us and make us worthier of him.

The world smiled upon you, and was as a poison to your soul. Would you wish to go on, right up to the hour of death, in ease and pleasure, in the pride of life and soul-destroying luxury, clinging to the world—which is Christ’s enemy, and rejecting the cross—which alone can make you holy? The world will turn away and forget, despise, and ignore you. Are you surprised at that, since the world is worldly, unjust, deceitful, and treacherous? Yet you are not ashamed to love this world, from which God snatches you to deliver you from its bondage and make you free.

You complain of your very deliverance. You are your own enemy when you are so alive to the world’s indifference, and you cannot endure what is for your real good when you so keenly regret the loss of what is fatal to you. This is the source of all your grief and pain. ■