Cup of Bitterness

[Diary 1453]

Today is the Feast of the New Year. I felt so bad in the morning that I barely managed to go to the next cell to receive Holy Communion. [225]I could not go to Mass because I felt so sick, and I made my thanksgiving in bed too. I wanted so much to go to Mass and then to confession to Father Andrasz, but I felt so bad that I could go neither to Mass nor to confession. And because of this my soul suffered a good deal. After breakfast, the Sister Infirmarian [Sister Chrysostom] came along and asked, "Sister, why didn't you go to Mass?" I answered that I couldn't. She shook her head disdainfully and said, "Such a great Feast Day, Sister, and you don't even go to Mass!" and she left my cell. I had been in bed for two days, writhing in pain, and she hadn't visited me; and when she did come, on the third day, she did not even ask if I were able to get up, but asked irritably why I hadn't got up for Mass. When I was alone, I tried to get up, but I was seized again with sickness, and so I stayed in bed with a calm conscience. Yet my heart had plenty to offer the Lord, joining itself spiritually to Him during the second Mass. After the second Mass, Sister Infirmarian returned to me, but this time in her capacity as infirmarian, and with a thermometer. But I had no fever, although I was seriously ill and unable to rise. So there was another sermon to tell me that I should not capitulate to illness. I answered her that I knew that here one was regarded as seriously ill only when one was in one's last agony. However, knowing that she was about to give me a lecture, I replied that at the present time I was in no need of being incited to greater zeal. And once again, I remained alone in my cell.

My heart was crushed with sorrow, and bitterness flooded my soul, and I repeated these words: "Welcome, New Year; welcome, cup of bitterness." My Jesus, my heart is eager for You, and yet the gravity of my illness prevents me from participating physically in the community prayers, and I am suspected of being lazy. My sufferings are becoming greater. After dinner, Mother Superior [Irene] looked in for a moment, but she left very soon. I intended to ask to have Father Andrasz come to my cell to hear my confession, but I restrained myself from making the request for two reasons: first, not to give occasion for murmuring, as had happened above in respect to Holy Mass; and secondly, because I would not even be able to make the confession, since I felt I would burst into tears like a little child. A while later, one of the sisters came along and again reproved me: "There's some milk with butter in the oven, Sister; why don't you drink it?" I answered that there was no one to bring it to me.

Source: DIARY, Saint Maria Faustina Kowalska: Divine Mercy in My Soul © 1987 Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception of the B.V.M.  Stockbridge, MA 01263.  All Rights Reserved. Used with permission.

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