Let the soul harken to the divine voice, and to her own amazement and wonder she will hear it say, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’. Who is poorer in spirit than the person whose spirit finds no rest and who has nowhere to lay his head? This also is a counsel of devotion, that the one who is displeasing to himself is pleasing to God, and one who hates his own house, that is to say a house full of filth and wretchedness, is invited to the house of glory, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. It is no wonder if such a one trembles with awe at the greatness of this honor, and finds it hard to believe what he has heard, if he starts in astonishment and says, ‘Is it possible for such wretchedness to make a man happy?’
Whoever you are, if you are in this frame of mind, do not despair: it is mercy, not misery, that can make you happy, but mercy’s natural home is misery. Indeed it happens that misery becomes the source of man’s happiness when humiliation turns into humility and necessity becomes a virtue. As it is written, ‘Rain in abundance, O God, you shed abroad; you restored your heritage as it languished’. Sickness has real utility when it leads us to the doctor’s hands, and he whom God restores to health gains by having been ill.
Bernard of Clairvaux
