THE INTERIOR LIFE. (3)

Imprisonment.

"I was in prison and you came to Me." "Lord when did we see Thee ... in prison?"

(St. Matt. xxv. 36, 39).

1st. Prelude. Turris Davidica.

2nd. Prelude. Grace to visit Him in His prison.

Point I. Dependence.

Our blessed Lord's life, during the nine months, was a life of imprisonment. He chose for Himself a position of dependence, helplessness and inability. He Who was the Light of the world chose to live in darkness; He Whom the Heavens cannot contain chose a more cramped position than any prisoner has ever had to endure; He Who was infinite allowed Himself to be confined; He Who was immortal took a mortal body. He endured all the sufferings that helplessness and inability and immobility entail; and we have to keep reminding ourselves that He was fully alive to all His sufferings. We are not making an imaginary picture, but trying to realize what were the actual facts of those nine months. His Mother understood, let us try to do the same. Let us go to the "Tower of David" where Our Lord is kept a prisoner and let us remember that He is there for us. Let us not be amongst those to whom He will have to say sadly: "I was in prison and you did not visit Me." Later on, at the end of His life, He will allow His own people to take Him prisoner and will stand still while they put the chains on His wrists and will allow Himself to be dragged where they wish. Later on still He will choose to be imprisoned in the little Host and to make Himself to the end of time our Prisoner of Love.

Thy imprisonments were all voluntary, my Jesus, they were all suffered out of love and out of love for me. Oh, may these visits that I am paying Thee during the blessed season of Advent result in my imbibing more of the spirit of my imprisoned Master. Mine too is a voluntary imprisonment; I am His captive because I said: I will be His servant, "I will not go out free" (Ex. xxi. 5). I gave up my liberty, preferring to be His prisoner rather than the devil's free man. Naturally He takes me at my word, but oh, sometimes prison-life is very hard to bear! He chains me to a bed of sickness, where I must lie still and see the work I long to do left undone or, what is perhaps harder still, badly done; He gives me great desires and no means of fulfilling them; He fills me with plans and schemes for His glory and then seems to make it impossible for them to be realized; He trains me, as I think, for some particular position and then detains me in another for which it seems to me I have not the least aptitude; He sets limits to my strength; He seems to keep me always in the background; He appears to use everybody else except me for His work; He seems to cramp my efforts and allow me no scope for the talents He has given me.

The Divine Prisoner Himself answers my plaints: My child, all these things only prove that you are My prisoner, that I have taken you at your word and that I do with you as I wish. Your time is not lost any more than Mine was. By doing My Will, however inscrutable it may seem to you, you are doing far more for Me than if you were doing your own. Trust me, be patient, bear and suffer all for Me, Who am a Prisoner for you. I love you to be dependent on Me, I love you to walk by faith, I love you to trust Me, and so I am constantly doing little things to remind you that you are My prisoner. Strive to be a prisoner of love as I am, that is (1) one who is in prison for love of another, (2) one who loves his chains, (3) one whose every act in prison is done to please Me.

Point II. Darkness.

How much darkness adds to the sufferings of prison life! It was a suffering which Jesus living in Mary endured for me; and yet while He, the Light of the world was there, her blessed womb was flooded with light, with the light of Heaven itself.

What light this thought throws on my interior life! The suffering of darkness! It is a suffering which He inflicts upon many of His prisoners of love. "Who is there among you that feareth the Lord, that heareth the voice of His servant, that hath walked in darkness and hath no light? Let him hope in the name of the Lord and lean upon his God." (Is. l. 10). If only I can make myself believe that the darkness is permitted by Him there will be a ray of light at once in the darkness because God is there, "Surely God is in this place." But how can I be sure that the darkness is permitted by Him? If I am living the interior life, if my intention is to please Him in all that I do, and if, however badly I succeed, I never willingly take back that intention, then I am pleasing God; and if I am pleasing God, I am one of His own dear children, just as really as was His Son Who did always the things that pleased Him. If I am one of His children I know, for He has told me so, that nothing can happen to me without His knowledge and His permission, yea His arranging. So if I have to walk in darkness rather than in light, if desolation is my spiritual lot and consolation is almost unknown to me, if a veil hides God's face and my continual cry is: "Oh, that I might know and find Him" (Job xxiii. 3), if prayer seems impossible, if I have a distaste, almost a repugnance for all spiritual things, if even Our Lady seems to desert me, if at times I am on the brink of despair, tempted even to think that my soul will be lost, if, in short, darkness, thick darkness has settled down on my soul—what then? "Let him hope in the name of the Lord and lean upon his God." But how can I hope in darkness, how can I lean upon Someone Who is not there? By faith, that is by saying all the time: This darkness is His doing, therefore it is what He wants for me. "I, the Lord create darkness!" That makes all the difference.

Faith, as it always does, lets a streak of light into the darkness; God is there and it is only to make the soul more sure of this that He permits the darkness. If the soul can find and recognize God in the darkness then it knows Him very intimately and this is what God wants—a love so great that it detects the Beloved One at once. Does darkness make any difference to the intercourse of those who love? They rather prefer it, so that all may be shut out except each other. This is what God wants from those whom He is teaching to be interior—He puts them into prison and leaves them in the dark. Are they going to be unhappy, to repine and complain, longing for consolation and all the sweet things with which God fed them when they hardly knew Him? Not if they have faith; and if their faith is strong, they will hardly be able to distinguish desolation from consolation, God's absence from His presence, yea the very darkness itself from the light! For is it not their God who is the cause of all that is happening to them, and is not that enough for those who love? They only want His Will, not their own, and His Will is to keep them in prison and in the dark and so to unite them more closely to Himself Who for their sake faced for nine months the darkness of the womb. In the terrible moments when despair seems so near us, let us hold on to the fact that we want to please God and therefore that we are His children and that He loves us and is arranging everything—this is the little ray of hope in the darkness, the line of light, and in it we read the words: "I give them life everlasting and they shall not perish for ever; and no man shall pluck them out of My Hand." (St. John x. 28).

Colloquy with Jesus, the Light of the world, imprisoned in darkness for me.

Resolution. To lean upon my God in times of darkness.

Spiritual Bouquet. "I form the light and create darkness." (Is. xlv. 7).