Devotion for today: For Strength is made perfect in weakness

I received this beautiful reflection from a friend who knew I was going through a particularly rough week. She said, “I want to share this thought of Blessed Columba Marmion, who, if canonized and made a Doctor of the Church, will be the Doctor of Divine Adoption, because he talked, preached and taught all his life about our Divine Adoption by our Heavenly Father:”

He said for us not to be "disheartened by trials, by things that stand in our way. They will be greater and deeper as God calls us higher...

God has a powerful hand and His purifying activity reaches depths that only the Saints know - the Vinedresser prunes the branch to make it bear more fruit (Jn.15:2). By the temptations He permits. By the adversities he sends, by the feelings of being deserted and the frightful loneliness He sometime produces in the soul, He tries that soul in order to detach it from what is merely created. He digs deep into it in order to empty it of itself; He 'pursues' it, He 'persecutes' it, in order to possess it' (words of Dom Pie de Hemptinne, a disciple of Blessed Columba Marmion);

He delves to its very marrow; He 'breaks its bones in order to reign in it alone'. Blessed the soul that abandons itself into the hands of this Divine Worker...Undoubtedly in these moments that are rich in graces, the soul is plunged into sorrow and suffering, into aridity and dryness. Let it remain firm beneath the blow of the Supreme High Priest! For God puts the unction of His grace even into the bitterness of the cross!" Jesus said to St. Paul, who cried out in his anguish to Him because of the many trials he was suffering: "My grace is sufficient for you, for strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor. 12:9). "Christ's strength is never shown so strikingly as in the difficulties over which it will triumph." - Blessed Columba Marmion,
"The Mysteries of Christ", Book Two, Ch. 21 - Christ, Crown of All Saints.