You are not yet accustomed to parrying the sudden strikes of injuries or of anything else opposed to you. To do so, learn to foresee them, and then to desire them more and more often, awaiting them with a ready spirit.

This is how you will foresee them. Consider the condition of your passions; consider likewise whom you will deal with and where you will go. From such considerations you can easily imagine what may befall you. And if some unforeseen opposition should befall you, beyond the the help you can rely on from a spirit prepared for the others you have seen, you can help yourself even more through the following method.

The moment you feel the first strikes of an injury or of some other painful event, remain alert, take courage, and raise your mind to God. Consider his ineffable goodness and the love he bears you — this very love with which he sends you adversity, so that by bearing it out of love for God, you purify yourself all the more, drawing near and uniting yourself to him. Realizing how much it pleases God that you bear this adversity, turn to yourself, reprove yourself, and exclaim to yourself: “Ah! Why is it that you do not wish to bear this cross, sent to you not by this person nor that one, but by your heavenly Father?” Then turn to the cross, embrace it with as great a patience and a joy as possible, and say: “O cross, created by divine providence before I was conceived! O cross, sweetened by the sweet love of my Crucified! Now nailing me to you that I might give myself to the one who, by dying on you, has redeemed me.”

If however your passions have initially prevailed, so that you cannot raise yourself to God, but you remain wounded, seek even so to raise yourself to God as before, as if you were unharmed. For an efficacious remedy against these sudden impulses, you would do well to remove as soon as possible the source from which they proceed. Suppose, for example, that you are attached to something. You notice that your spirit is troubled when the object of your affection is denied you. The way to prepare for this is for you to accustom yourself to denying the satisfaction of your affection.

Suppose instead that your turmoil proceeds not from a thing, but from a person you cannot stand, whose every little action pricks and disturbs you. The remedy is to compel yourself to incline your will to love her and to hold her dear. Indeed, should you bear with her as a creature formed like you by a sovereign hand and redeemed by the same divine blood, she will provide you the opportunity to make yourself loving and gentle with all people, and in this you will resemble your Lord.