fter
stroke--of the partial destruction of the Cathedral Church of Louvain,
next of the burning of the library and of the scientific installations
of our great university and of the devastation of the city, and next of
the wholesale shooting of citizens, and tortures inflicted upon women
and children and upon unarmed and undefended men.

And, while I was still under the shock of these calamities, the
telegraph brought us news of the bombardment of our beautiful
metropolitan church, of the Church of Notre Dame au dela la Dyle, of the
episcopal palace, and of a great part of our dear City of Malines.

Afar from my diocese, without means of communication with you, I was
compelled to lock my grief within my own afflicted heart and to carry
it, with the thought of you, which never left me, to the foot of the
Crucifix.

I craved courage and light, and sought them in such thoughts as these: A
disaster has visited the world, and our beloved little Belgium, a nation
so faithful in the great mass of her population to God, so upright in
her patriotism, so noble in her King and Government, is the first
sufferer. She bleeds; her sons are stricken down within her fortresses
and upon her fields, in defense of her rights and of her territory.

Soon there will not be one Belgian family not in mourning. Why all this
sorrow, my God? Lord, Lord, hast Thou forsaken us? Then I looked upon
the Crucifix. I looked upon Jesus, most gentle and humble Lamb of God,
crushed, clothed in His blood as in a garment, and I thought I heard
from His own mouth the words which the psalmist uttered in His name: "O
God, my God, look upon me; why hast Thou forsaken me? O my God, I shall
cry, and Thou wilt not hear."

And forthwith the murmur died upon my lips, and I remembered what our
Divine Saviour said in His gospel: "The disciple is not above the
master, nor the servant above his lord." The Christian is the servant of
a God who became man in order to suffer and to die.

To rebel against pain, to revolt against Providence because it permits
grief and bereavement, is to forget whence we came, the school in which
we have been taught, the example that each of us carries graven in the
name of a Christian, which each of us honors at his hearth, contemplates
at the altar of his prayers, and of which he desires that his tomb, the
place of his last sleep, shall bear the sign.

My dearest brethren, I shall return by and by to the providential law of
suffering