She bleeds; her sons are stricken down within her fortresses
and upon her fields, in defense of her rights and of her territory.
Soon there will not be one Belgian family not in mourning. Why all this
sorrow, my God? Lord, Lord, hast Thou forsaken us? Then I looked upon
the Crucifix. I looked upon Jesus, most gentle and humble Lamb of God,
crushed, clothed in His blood as in a garment, and I thought I heard
from His own mouth the words which the psalmist uttered in His name: "O
God, my God, look upon me; why hast Thou forsaken me? O my God, I shall
cry, and Thou wilt not hear."
And forthwith the murmur died upon my lips, and I remembered what our
Divine Saviour said in His gospel: "The disciple is not above the
master, nor the servant above his lord." The Christian is the servant of
a God who became man in order to suffer and to die.
To rebel against pain, to revolt against Providence because it permits
grief and bereavement, is to forget whence we came, the school in which
we have been taught, the example that each of us carries graven in the
name of a Christian, which each of us honors at his hearth, contemplates
at the altar of his prayers, and of which he desires that his tomb, the
place of his last sleep, shall bear the sign.
My dearest brethren, I shall return by and by to the providential law of
suffering, but you will agree that since it has pleased a God-made man
who was holy, innocent, without stain, to suffer and to die for us who
are sinners, who are guilty, who are perhaps criminals, it ill becomes
us to complain whatever we may be called upon to endure.
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