March 14: Saint Pierre Abbé

Non est qui consoletur eam ex omnibus charis. Eius. Lam. Ier. c.I.
None of her friends step forward to console her. So the soul searches for the consolation of God alone.
Revera illud solum et verum est gaudium quod non de creatura, sed de creatore concipitur. S. Bern. In Epist.
The one true joy is not found in creatures whatsoever, but in the Creator by resignation to His Will.

Example: Saint Pierre Abbé joyfully suffered the abandonment of mortal creatures because the immortals and blessed stood steadfastly by his side . As a young boy at Clairvaux, he fell asleep during Matins at which point an angel in the figure of a bird woke him up. Later in life, a chronic migraine forced him to quit singing in the choir. Upon leaving his dear choral companions, he heard a host of angels boldly sing Laudans invocabo Dominum (With praise I will call upon the name of the Lord), which consoled him and encouraged him to continue his prayers. When he was harvesting grain with his brothers, the Sacred Virgin appeared to him and wiped the sweat from their brows while giving them words of encouragement in their time of exhaustion. Pierre considered himself to be so fortunate to have seen the Virgin that having lost one of his eyes in an illness, he rejoiced and proclaimed that he no longer had any enemies. He voluntarily closed the other eye to enter into his precocious death.

Practice: Lover of God, when your afflictions may be compared to those of Jerusalem as described by Jeremiah, the greatest source of your sorrow will not be your abandonment by your friends. Nor will it be your persecution at the hands of your enemies. It will be yourself. Yes, yourself, because when you allow yourself to be overwhelmed by your passions without even trying to tame them, you do yourself a great disservice. In fact, you become your own worst enemy. So submit yourself to the Will of God: who commands you to declare war on your passions, establish your peace, take back your happiness, and by all of this to render your days joyful.