“God Alone!”: A Simple, Consoling and Blessed Rule for Living.

“GOD ALONE!”

– These words can be found over the doors in Cistercian monasteries.

For many, life is a great burden. If only they knew the love of God! God desires our greatest good, namely, union with Him, because He is the Source of all good. I am the vine; you the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for without me you can do nothing. How do we unite ourselves to Him? Through confidence, charity and humility. He that loveth not, abideth in death.

“It is not hard to love Love itself,” said Our Lord to Servant of God, Sr. Josefa Menendez. “Why do you permit so much suffering?”, we might ask…

“When a soul is stretched on the cross, and is surrendered to My will, that soul glorifies me, and consoles Me,

and is very close to Me.”

– Our Lord to Sr. Josefa Menendez

Ah, yes! Union with God! That is our greatest good. “GOD ALONE!” 

“It would be very pleasing to me,” said Jesus to St. Gertrude, “if my friends judged me less cruel. They should have the delicacy of thinking that I do not use severity, except for their benefit and for their greater benefit. I do it through love, and if this were
not necessary to cure them or in order to increase their eternal glory, I would not even let the slightest breeze bother them.”

In all our trials, all our worries – at all times – we need only seek God. “GOD ALONE!” Nothing will be of greater profit to us; nothing will afford us more consolation, both here and hereafter. Without God we are like a child without nourishment from its mother’s breast. Actually, we have an even greater need of God, for without Him we can do nothing! He sustains us in existence and nourishes us constantly with His strength and grace.

We must convince ourselves that God’s constant desire is what is best for us. The words “Blessed be God!” and other such words should always be in our heart and on our lips. Human ‘wisdom’, which complains that a “good God would not allow so much suffering”, rejects the One Who made the Cross a bridge between Heaven and Earth; but by doing so they blindly reject the very means by which they are to find true life; that is, by dying to self, to sin, to ego, to selfishness! I die daily, says St. Paul (1 Corinthians 15:31). To be united to Life itself, we must be purged of sinfulness and imperfection. It is impossible to grow closer to God without trials.

Words of Our Lord to Sr. Josefa Menendez:

“When a soul is burnt up with desire to love, nothing is a burden to her, but if she feels cold and spiritless everything becomes hard and difficult. Let her then come to My Heart to revive her courage…”

(“GOD ALONE!”)

“… Let her offer Me her dejection, and unite it to My fervour; then she may rest content, for her day will be of incomparable value to souls. All human miseries are known to My Heart, and My compassion for them is great.”

(“GOD ALONE!”)

“But I desire souls to unite themselves to Me not only in a general way. I long for this union to be constant and intimate, as it is between friends who live together; for even if they are not talking all the time, at least they look at each other, and their mutual affectionate little kindnesses are the fruit of their love…”

(“GOD ALONE!”)

“When a soul is in peace and consolation, doubtless it is easier for her to think of Me, but if she is in the throes of desolation and anguish, she need not fear. I am content with a glance. I understand, and this mere look will draw down on her special proofs of my tenderness.”

(“GOD ALONE!”)

“It will never be known,” said Jesus to Sr. Jeanne Benigne Gojos “what I have suffered to repair the evil of man.”  Will we not, then, bear at least a small burden for Our Saviour each day?

“When thou art suffering, whether interiorly orexteriorly, do not lose the merit of thy pain; suffer only for Me.”

– Jesus to Sr. Benigna Consolata

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“GOD ALONE!”

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The Joy of Pain.

A conversation between St. Gertrude the Great and Our Lord (taken from her ‘Revelations’):

Christ: Tell Me, My beloved, is it not with love for Me that you languish?

Gertrude: How could I, dear Lord, wretched sinner that I am, dare to say that I languish with love of Thee?

Christ: Whoever renounces his own will to suffer anything for love of Me, can glory in his infirmity; and in thus glorying he will tell Me that he languishes with love of Me, provided only that he suffers with patience and keeps his mind perseveringly fixed on Me.

Gertrude: And what canst Thou gain, dearest Lord, from this assurance?

Christ: Such a sentiment will rejoice My Divinity and give glory to My Humanity. It is pleasing in My sight and a hymn of praise to delight Me. This practice will be a consolation to all who use it; and it touches Me so much that it constrains Me to give grace to the contrite, to convert sinners and to release souls from purgatory.

Gertrude: And wilt Thou, dear Lord, after this, my seventh illness, give me back my former health?

Christ: If, the first time you were ill, I had told you that you had yet to suffer seven different times, you would, perhaps, through human weakness have been afraid, and you might have given way to some im patience. So now, if I promised you health, the hope of coming to the end of your sufferings might diminish your merit. That is why, in My wisdom and care for you, I have left you in ignorance of one and the other in order that you may daily sigh after Me with your whole heart, offering to Me continually all your pains of mind and body.

While you do this, I, on my part, will watch over you with such faithful and tender care as never to permit you to be tried beyond your strength, for I know perfectly both your patience and your weakness. Consider, in proof of this, how you are actually less feeble now than you were after your first illness. Take courage then and trust to My goodness.

Seek Consolation In The Sacred Heart Of Jesus!

(The following words, taken from ‘Love, peace and joy: a month of the Sacred Heart according to St. Gertrude’, will be of immense profit to all those who put these words into practice. The fruits derived from this practice are so great that you might well wish the whole world knew these words.)

It seems, however, that the Heart of Jesus desires, above all, that we shall unite our sufferings to His, in order that He may communicate to them His infinite merits. There is nothing that He recommends so frequently. One day, when St. Mechtilde felt that her infirmities rendered her, as it were, useless in the service of God, Jesus said to her:

“Place all thy sufferings in My Heart, and I will give them the highest perfection for the utility of the whole Church. Even as My Divinity has united to itself the sufferings of My humanity, in order to make them Divine, so I wish to unite thy sufferings to Myself, in order to render them perfect.

Offer them to My love, saying: O Love, to Thee do I entrust my sufferings, with the same intention with which Thou hast brought them to me from the Heart of my God; and I beseech Thee, with my deepest gratitude, to receive them again when Thou hast given them their highest perfection. Thy heart will thus unite itself to the love which makes Me embrace the Cross with My whole Heart, and to the gratitude with which I thanked My Father for having permitted Me to suffer for those I love ; and even as My Passion has borne infinite fruits, both in Heaven and on earth, thy sufferings, even the most trivial, when united to My Passion, will bear such fruits that the citizens of Heaven will receive from them an increase of glory; the just an increase of grace; sinners their pardon; and the souls in Purgatory an alleviation of their pains.

What is there, in fact, that My Divine Heart cannot change for the better, since all that is precious in Heaven and on earth has its source in the goodness of My Heart?”

And why should not we also, in all, even the most trivial of our sufferings, assure to ourselves the incomparable fruits which union with the Heart of Jesus secured for our Saint? Why should not we also receive them with the love and gratitude which she drew from the Saviour’s Heart? It is so sweet and easy to do so! It is not a question of suffering more, but of suffering better, with more consolation and fruit. We have only to suffer all in union with the Heart of Jesus. May it be henceforth our habitual practice!

Is it not evident that if we thus place our trials in the Heart of Jesus, they will at once be greatly alleviated? On one occasion, as St. Mechtilde was praying for a person in affliction, Our Lord said to her:

“Let her, with childlike simplicity, bring all her troubles to Me; let her seek her consolation in My compassionate Heart, and I will never abandon her.”

“Jesus”, adds the Saint, “has bestowed on us the gift of His Heart, in order that we may, when in sorrow, seek our refuge and our consolation therein.”