“GOD, God wants you to be in that position, to hold that office, to suffer that illness, to be hidden and degraded in that corner, to be afflicted by that adversity, that contempt, that persecution. Yes, God wants it: that the world reason, that self-love complain: God wants it.
“And He wills it by always proposing our greatest good: He seeks, oh! supply, blessed spirits, our insufficiency to adore the goodness of the Creator; He seeks on every occasion our own benefit with a charity so provident that, if the veil were drawn back, if we were given to penetrate the secrets of divine Providence over us, we would approve without reservation what now gives us so much pain, and we would not make use of our freedom except to choose what happens to us by permission of heaven.
“How could anything else happen? The infinitely perfect Being, from whose eyes nothing is hidden (6), knows what is most advantageous to us, and can also give it to us, since He can do all that He wills (7). He will give it to us, therefore, because He loves us as the apple of His eye (8): He carries us in His bosom as a nurse usually carries the little one (9); consequently, everything that happens to us by His disposition happens for our greater good.”
— Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, by Aloysius Bellecius SJ
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