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Our Lord says to His servant: You will never be safe from temptation and tribulation in this life, and therefore spiritual armor is necessary for you as long as you live. You are among your enemies and will be troubled and vexed by them on every side; unless you use everywhere the shield of patience, you will not long preserve yourself unwounded. And more than that - if you do not set your heart strongly upon Me, with a ready will to suffer all things patiently for Me, you cannot long bear this struggle, or come to the reward of the blessed saints. It behooves you, therefore, resolutely to forego many things and to use a strong hand against all assaults of the enemy. To him who overcomes is promised the food of angels; to him who is overcome is left much misery.
If you seek rest in this life, how will you, then, come to everlasting rest? Do not determine to have rest here, but to have patience, seek true rest not on earth, but in heaven; not in man or in any creature, but in God alone, where true rest is. You ought gladly to suffer all things for the love of God: all labors, sorrows, temptations, vexations; all anguish, need, sickness, injuries, evil sayings, reproaches; all oppressions, confusions, corrections, and despisings. These greatly help a man to virtue; these prove the true knight of Christ and prepare for him a heavenly crown. And I shall reward him with everlasting reward for his short labor, with infinite glory for his transitory confusion.
