Why only God can truly comfort you in suffering

Benedictus deus et pater domini nostri Jesu Christi etc (2 Cor. 1:3). That great teacher St Paul says in his epistle, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation. Three kinds of tribulation may fall upon a person and plunge them in distress. First, misfortune to outward belongings. Next, to our dearest friends. Lastly, to ourselves: shame, hardship, pain of body and distress of mind.

So I intend in this book to offer some teachings fit to console a person in all adversity, unhappiness and suffering. And having gathered from these some general truths to comfort a person in any trouble, the reader will find after that thirty rules or maxims, each of which alone is enough for comfort; and after that again, in the third part of the book, the reader will find precepts and examples, both in theory and in practice, the sayings and doings of the wise in times of tribulation.

First we must keep in mind that the wise and wisdom, true and truth, good and goodness, righteousness and righteous are closely related to each other. Goodness is not made nor created nor begotten: it is procreative and begets the good, and the good person, so far as they are good, is the unmade, uncreated but nonetheless begotten child and son of goodness. Goodness reproduces itself and all it is in good things: knowledge, love, energy, it pours all of these into the good person, and the good person receives all their being, knowing, love and energy from the central depth of goodness and from that alone. Good and goodness are no more than goodness by itself, except as unborn parent and born child of goodness from it. In the good there is only one being and one life. All that belongs to a good person they get both from the good and in the good. There they are and live and dwell and there they know themselves, and all they know and love they will and work with goodness and in goodness, and the good does all its work with them and in them, as it is written. The Son said, My Father who dwells in me, he does the works. All that belongs to the Father is mine; all that is mine is my Father's: his giving is my taking.

Further we must remember that the Name or Word stands for nothing else, nothing more or less than the good, pure and simple. But when we call him good we understand his goodness to be given him, poured into him and engendered by the unborn goodness; in the words of the gospel, As the Father has life in himself so has he given to the Son to have the same life in himself also. In himself, he says, not from himself, for the Father gave it to him.

Now all that I have said of good and goodness applies equally to true and truth, to right (or just) and righteousness (or justice), to wise and wisdom, to God's Son and to God the Father, to everything begotten of God that has no father on earth and in which nothing created is begotten: nothing that is not God, and in which there exists no form at all but that of God alone. St John says in his gospel, to them he gave power to become the sons of God, who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man but of God alone.

^ Only Part I is given here.

By blood he means everything in a person not subject to human will. By fleshly will he means everything in a person that is subject to their will, though with reluctance and a leaning toward fleshly appetites: something common to body and soul alike and not confined to the soul alone, which accounts for the weakness and exhaustion of their powers. By the will of man St John means the highest power of the soul, whose nature and energy, unmixed with flesh, resides in the pure nature of the soul, detached from time and place and from everything that has to do with time and place; that has nothing in common with anything; in which a person is formed in the image of God; in which they are of the lineage of God, and God's kindred. Yet since these are not God himself but are products of the soul and exist in the soul, they must lose their form and be transformed into God alone: born into God and out of God with only God as father. Then they are truly Son, God's only Son.

I am his Son in that he begets me in his nature and forms me in his image. Such a one is the Son of God, good son of goodness, right son of righteousness. So far as they are simply good they are unborn parent, and as born Son they have the same nature as righteousness has, and possess all the character of justice and truth. In all this teaching, which is found in the holy gospel and confirmed in the natural light of the wise soul, there is comfort for every human sorrow.

St Augustine says, God is not far nor long. If you would find him, go to God neither far nor long, for there a thousand years are as one day, today. And I say besides, in God there is no pain or sorrow or distress. And if you would be free from all adversity and pain, turn and cleave to God and to God alone. No doubt all your ills come from your not being turned wholly into God and God alone. If you were formed and begotten in righteousness alone, things could no more pain you than righteousness could, than God himself could.

Solomon says, The righteous will not grieve for anything that may happen to him. He does not say the righteous person or the righteous angel, not this or that right thing; just righteous, being right, for the righteous person is a son with a father on earth, they are a creature, made or created as their father is a creature made or created. He says righteous, pure and simple, and that has no made or created father, for righteousness is the same as God. So pain and sorrow can trouble such a one no more than they trouble God. Justice will not grieve them, for love and joy and bliss are justice, and if justice made the just sorrowful it would be causing sorrow to itself. Injustice, inequality, cannot in any way grieve the just, for anything created, being far beneath them, has no influence and makes no impression on the righteous, nor does it get into the one whose only father is God.

A person then ought to set to work and strip themselves of self and creatures and know no father except God alone. Then nothing will be able to afflict or cast them down, neither God nor creature, uncreated or created, and their whole being, life, knowledge, love and wisdom will be from God and in God and God.

There is another thing that is apt to comfort us in any tribulation. It is the certainty that the just and virtuous person delights unspeakably, incomparably more in doing right than they, or even the chief angel, delight and rejoice in their natural life. The saints will gladly give up their lives for the right.

Suppose now that when outward ills befall the good and righteous person they keep their even temper and their peace of mind; this only proves my argument that the righteous person is proof against external happenings. But suppose they are shaken by these mishaps, then it follows that God is only just in sending trials to a person who, while pretending to be righteous and fondly thinking themselves so, is yet upset by so small a thing. Since this is fair of God, they have no cause to mind but rather to rejoice, far more than they do at their own life, at what rejoices a person and does them more good than the whole world; for what does the whole world profit a person when they are no more?

The third important thing for us to understand is the elemental truth that the fountain and living artery of universal good, abiding truth and perfect comfort is God, God only, and everything that is not God has in itself a natural bitterness, discomfort and unhappiness, and does not make for the good that is of God and is the same as God, but lessens, dims and hides the sweetness, joy and comfort that God gives.

And further I say, all sorrow comes from love of that of which I am deprived by loss. If I mind the loss of outward things it is a sure sign that I am fond of outward things and really love sorrow and discomfort. Is it any wonder I am unhappy when I like discomfort and unhappiness; when my heart seeks and my mind gives to the creature the good that belongs to God alone? I turn toward the creature, from which all discomfort comes by nature, and turn my back on that which is the natural source of happiness and comfort; small wonder I am sorrowful and wretched! The fact is, it is quite impossible for God or anyone to bring true comfort to a person who looks for it in creatures. But the one who loves only God in creatures and creatures only in God finds real and true and equal comfort everywhere.