Deprivations: what they are and their source of moral greatness

1. Endure involuntary deprivations. The world is like a hospital, where complaints rise from every side, where everyone is missing something to be happy. Deprivation in goods, in health, in family peace, in work, in virtues, in holiness !!! Who goes free? There's no need to worry about it! Patience and resignation change earthly thorns into roses. Great thing, patience!

2. Add voluntary deprivations to it. Suffering is hard on the weak nature; but seeing Jesus fasting for 40 days, enduring unheard of sufferings, to the point of wanting a drop of water, and not having it; and everything suffers for our love, how can we not imitate it? This is the reason for the scourges, the fasts, the mortifications of the Saints ... They loved Jesus. What do you say, impatient of every pain?

3. The privations, source of moral greatness. If the mundane deprives themselves of the comforts to enrich themselves; if the soldier lives from privations to make a career in arms: the righteous one deprives himself of sleep and food, and becomes temperate; he mortifies himself in anger, and becomes patient; afflicts the body, and lifts the spirit; he suffers a few days, but prepares endless enjoyments. The B, Valfrè was greedy for mortifications more than the mundane of pleasures. Pray to the Blessed One to obtain the strength to imitate him in some way.

PRACTICE. - Deprive yourself of honest pleasure in imitating Blessed Valfrè in his desire to mortify himself.