La Bonne Souffrance

Extract

If there is one truth which comes home to a convert with special force it is this, aut pati aut mori, we must either suffer or perish. Every spiritual writer and every convert must often echo the great truth,

‘no cross, no crown.’ Per crucem ad lucem, la bonne souffrance, durch Leiden Freude—"it runs through the tongues of Christendom. Our Blessed Lady thus spoke to St. Bridget ‘To alleviate the first of your troubles. I offer you three subjects of consolation : firstly, the necessity of suffering, imposed upon all who dwell upon earth. Consider that the animals, who, when they die, become extinct, are themselves subject to great sufferings, but your soul will live for ever.’

Even the wiser pagans recognised dimly that suffering may be both expiatory and educational—

th, iraOrjfiaTa pad t) par a.—

that it was to be borne with resignation even when it took the form of human injustice :

Owto? K panaris ear avfjp, 3) Topyia, oaris dBiiceiadai irkeiar imararai ftpor&v

1 The Revelations of St. Bridget, Bk. I, Ch. xi (Eng-. Transl., 1873, p. 20).

Regarding the destiny of animals, Our Blessed Lord said to St. Bridget: ‘For this reason, objects purely spiritual appear to you only in corporal forms; angels and blessed souls under those of living men, and demons under the forms of animals and other creatures; but having only an. appearance of life, for animals become extinct when they die, and even the life of devils is a perpetual death’ (Ibid., Bk. II, Ch. v, p. 69).

Menander, quoted in. Aristophanis Comoediae (Paris, Didot, 1860) p. 10, at the end of the volume.