Circe who, by her magic, turned men into beasts, but certain herbs, whose flowers are whitest but whose roots the bitterest, rendered Ulysses proof against her charms. Brethren, such another herb is voluntary penance, bitter to the taste but bearing rarest flowers and fruits and fortifying us against Bacchante's incantations, who fain would make us beasts. In fact, the word tribulation comes from tribular, a thistle, because it pricks our feet and makes us careful how and where we walk. But that is only one of all its heavenly effects, bitter though it be. It is the gall wherewith the young Tobias smeared his father's eyes, for it enables our blinded eyes to shed the scales of sin and see aright. It is the absinthe on the breast of Nature that weans us from this world and concentrates our hearts on God. I remember, when a boy, I wondered why the village blacksmith doused the fire with water to heat the metal quickly. In Scripture figures!, oil is comfort, and tribulation, water; and God afflicts us to prevent the heat of our affections going out to worldly things; to drive it inward and so inflame us with His love.
Brethren, there is to heaven but one small door, so low, indeed, that whoso enters in must bend low down until his body takes almost the form of a cross. Small chance is there for bloated, tipsy revellers to scramble through. Many, too, that seek to enter are not able, since they come too late and find it closed. In great St. Peter's, Rome, there is a little door where one may pass in time of jubilee, but after that not even prince or pontiff is suffered more to enter.
