529. April 27, Our Father's Cure
Meditations no. 461 (unofficial computer-aided translation)
Our Lord permitted our Father to suffer a serious illness for many years. The value of suffering.
For many years, at least from 1944 to 1954, our Lord permitted our Father to suffer a serious form of diabetes. Its first symptoms made themselves felt at the end of 1943, but it was in 1944 that it showed itself in all its gravity, while our founder was preaching a retreat to a community of Augustinian Religious of the Escorial Monastery. Thereafter came his journeys to Rome, undertaken by our Father in the face of vigorous discouragement from the doctors. Our Father put his trust in our Lord, well aware that the good of the Work required it.
The early years he spent in the Eternal City were very hard for our founder, replete as they were with misunderstandings and difficulties of all kinds. Not even then was he very concerned about his health, for he was detached from all that had to do with his own self. To be sure, those of his children whom he had by his side, especially Don Ćlvaro, did all they could to look after our Father. He, meanwhile, bore that illness with great supernatural outlook and a good sense of humour.
Every two weeks, more or less - explained Don Ćlvaro, who was an eye-witness to the events - the necessary tests were carried out to monitor the variations in his blood-sugar level. It was amazing: he just did not improve. He had such a high level, that, as our Father himself observed with that great sense of humour of his, if some Doctors of the Church had gone down in history with names like āDoctor Mellifluousā, a title applied to St Bernard, they would have to call me Pater Dulcissimusā¦
The diabetes brought in its train a host of inconveniences upon our founder, but he bore them all with a great spirit of sacrifice, without ever neglecting his obligations. As Don Ćlvaro observed: He followed a very stringent diet and we had nonetheless to inject insulin into him, to the tune of a hundred and ten units a day. This was a tremendous dose. The disease would subject him to headaches of the strongest kind and he would never, ever complainā¦
Furthermore, he had to drink water constantly, because diabetes also induces a very great thirst. I have seen how our Father would be left with his tongue completely dry, and not only dry, but all split up on the inside, as if by an injury inflicted by the very dryness. When a piece of meat is left out in the sun, it ends up like leather and it breaks up. And this is how I saw our Fatherās tongue. I donāt even know how he spoke, and he nevertheless went on with his normal life. Well, then, in these circumstances, where he had a necessity to drink so much, he would ask for a glass of water, and leave it in front of himself and continue talking. Only after quite some time - it was a time of mortification - would he drink a little.
On one occasion, one of our brothers made a comment to him on the discomforts that the continual injections must have meant for him. Our Father answered him in a lively way: Donāt worry, I have offered up these discomforts for the souls in Purgatory.
With this supernatural outlook and a total abandonment in God, he lived out the decade or so that our Lord ordained for him to suffer from that illness. The prolonged physical pain, along with the moral suffering he underwent from the time of his youth, all served to draw him closer to God.
Gratitude to God on this new anniversary of our Fatherās cure. Learning to bear up under the illnesses our Lord may permit in our lives.
By 1954, ten years had passed from the time the doctors had diagnosed the diabetes. In all that time, our Father had been getting worse, in spite of the vigorous medical treatment and the nutritional care to which he had been submitted.
On the 27th of April of that year, the feast of Our Lady of Montserrat, Don Ćlvaro gave him an insulin injection, as he usually did. The two of us were alone in the dining room, and facing one another at the table - he was to observe sometime later - and the Father suddenly asked me, āĆlvaro, give me the absolution.ā He looked to me to be perfectly well, and I answered: āBut, Father, what are you saying?ā āAbsolution!ā I was astonished, and the Father began to recite the formula aloud, as though he were helping me: āI absolve youā¦ āJust then he became unconscious and something strange happened. All at once, the Father changed colour. He became bright red, then a violet colour and, finally, an earthy yellow. And, above all, he ended up somehow very little, fallen over onto one sideā¦
Don Ćlvaro imparted the sacramental absolution to our Father several times, as is done in these cases, and he applied all the means at his disposal to bring him round, while the doctor was being summoned urgently. When he arrived, our Father was already recovering. Years later, he was to observe: When I was on the point of losing consciousness, in a matter of a few seconds, our Lord made me see my life as if it were a film. I was filled with shame, for so many errors, and I asked our Lord for forgiveness. You really canāt go through more than that. Itās as though I had died.
On the 27th of April 1954, after overcoming that trial - by the goodness of God, who no doubt acceded to the petitions of the Blessed Virgin - our Father ended up being cured from the serious form of diabetes he had been suffering. Our Lord allowed some effects of the long illness to remain in his system. Left behind were ten years of suffering, which are for us a school on how to bear up under illness, when our Lord allows it in our lives to purify us and make us worthier of his love. And so, if at some time physical pain comes our way, we ought to be up to recognising the loving hand of Jesus.
In order to draw all the fruit our Lord expects from these periods of suffering, we need to receive them with the supernatural outlook we have seen in our Fatherās life. What our founder stated in 1972, full of fatherly pride, will thereby come to pass for us too: At this time, there are sick people in the Work who are wonderful. They are our jewels, the treasure of the Work, as I have called them from the beginning. With what joy they bear their illnesses! When our turn comes, if we have been humble, God will help us and we wonāt be troublesome. We will be the joy of the Centre where we are. We will be the strength of the Work. We will be a great manifestation of the Love of God and of love for God.
Itās always necessary to be sincere, also at those times. To be unwell and to be taciturn is not good spirit. You have to talk about it, so that the appropriate remedies may be applied quickly. Moreover, the illness complex is avoided. For, just as no one is a saint on the earth - we are all inclined towards sin, to the greatest barbarities - so it is that there is no one who is always healthy. We can all pass through a bad spell or through a serious illness. Speak up straightaway, my children. Thatās the right way to go.
If we live with this abandonment and humility, we will know how to obtain all the fruit our Lord expects from this situation, when it arises.
The cure took place on a feast of our Lady. Confidence in God and in our Lady.
I am a sinner, but I have on many occasions and for many years been quite sick. . When I used to go to bed at night, I did not know whether I would get up the following day, and when I used to get up, I didnāt know whether I would get to bed-timeā¦ I could die this very day, for that matter. This can always happen to us. But having, as I did then, a serious illnessā¦ I have never been so happy as I was in those ten years! This is how our founder expressed himself on a certain occasion, talking about the grave illness he suffered for so many years. And he concluded: And so, illness is not a cross, it is not a sorrow. It is a blessing from God. If it is accepted, you find happiness, and that, with lack of health, with scarcity, with povertyā¦
The serious form of diabetes no doubt constituted a great trial and, at the same time, a most efficacious instrument of purification and of identification with Christ. And our Father -faithful to Godās grace - rose to the occasion. As our founder observed more than once, it contributed to his cultivating an abandonment into the hands of God. Night would come and I used to say: Lord, I donāt know whether Iāll get up tomorrow. I thank you for whatever remaining span of life you may want to give me and I am happy to die in your arms; I hope in your mercy. In the morning, upon awakening, the first thought would be the same.
Then, on a feast of the Blessed Virgin, our Lord took away a large part of that cross from our Fatherās shoulders, as if to make known that his most holy Mother had again been an efficacious intercessor.
The teaching is clear. We should never lose our joy in the face of illness. Rather, these situations have to lead us to increase our trust in our Father God, to abandon ourselves in his hands in the certainty that, come what may in our lives, our Lord wants, or permits, it for our spiritual and eternal good: Omnia in bonum! As our founder wrote: Christian optimism is not a sugary optimism; nor is it a mere human confidence that everything will turn out all right.
It is an optimism that sinks its roots in an awareness of our freedom, and in the sure knowledge of the power of grace. It is an optimism which leads us to make demands on ourselves, to struggle to respond at every moment to Godās calls.
As we finish this time of prayer, we seek out the Blessed Virgin, Salus infirmorum - Health of the sick and Consolatrix afflictorum - Comfort of the afflicted, so as to ask her for all the persons in our supernatural Family who are suffering in body or soul, so that she may console them and obtain for them the grace to love those sufferings, which identify us so much with Christ.