Earthly trials of men on a mission

… It is necessary, my children, that blood purify the Earth; a terrible struggle, all the more horrible for the splendor of the civilization in the midst of which it bursts forth. What, Lord! when everything is being prepared to tighten the bonds of peoples from one extremity of the world to the other! when at the dawn of material fraternity the lines of demarcation of races, customs, and language are seen tending toward unity, war arrives with its procession of ruins, of fires, of profound divisions, of religious hatreds. Yes, all this because nothing in our progress was according to the Spirit of God; because your bonds were tightened neither by goodness nor by loyalty, but only by interest; because it is not true charity that imposes silence upon religious hatreds, but indifference; because the barriers were not lowered at your frontiers by the love of all, but by mercantile calculations; in short, because the views are human and instinctive, and not spiritual and charitable; because those who govern seek only their own advantage, and each one, among the peoples, does the same. Sublime selflessness of Jesus and his apostles, where are you? — You grow sad, my children, when at times you think of the harsh mission of those sublime Spirits, who come to raise the courage of Humanity and die in the task, after having emptied the bitter cup of human ingratitudes. You moan to see that the Lord, who sent them, seems to abandon them at the moment when his protection seems most necessary. Have they not spoken to you of the trials suffered by elevated Spirits at the moment of crossing a higher step in spiritual initiative? Have they not told you that each degree of the celestial hierarchy is bought by merit, by devotion, as among you, in the army, by blood shed and by services rendered? Well then! such is the case in which the Messiahs find themselves on this land of sorrows; they are sustained as long as their humanitarian work lasts, as long as they labor for man and for God, but, when they alone are at stake, when their trial becomes individual, the visible aid withdraws, the struggle proves harsh and rude when man must endure it. Here is the explanation of that apparent abandonment, which afflicts you in the life of the missionaries of all degrees of your Humanity. Do not think that God ever abandons his creature out of caprice or impotence; no, but in the interest of its advancement he leaves it to its own strength, to the full exercise of its free will.

Curé d'Ars. n [1]

[Vianney, the Curé d'Ars.]