On the value of affliction
1846
…My body keeps faltering ever further with every passing moment, but not my spirit. Never have I experienced bodily pain this debilitating. It often gets so, so unbearably hard to endure, and your entire body aches so wretchedly that you are beyond happy once the day is over and you are finally in bed. Often, whilst in deep spiritual anguish, you will find yourself crying: 'O Lord! Where is the end?'. But then, once you look back and take a closer, deeper look at yourself, your soul will only ever cry with gratitude.
O, just how terribly we need illness! I will only share one out of all the many fruits they brought me: no matter who I am now, I am already better than I was before. If it had not been for those afflictions, I would have believed that I had already become who I am supposed to be. Moreover, being in solid health often nudges Russians to engage in questionable shenanigans and try to show off; if I were in solid health, I would have certainly thrown myself into all manner of foolish escapades by now. Meanwhile, now, in my sober minutes, given to me by Heaven amidst my suffering, I am sometimes visited by thoughts far nobler than any I had before. I can see now that everything I shall write henceforth will be more significant than my prior work also.
Had it not been for my excruciating pain, who knows just how much I would have exalted myself! How haughty I could have become! Yet I keep hearing that my life is hanging by a thread, that my malady can cut short my life's work[1], that as much as my soul yearns to do good, it can all stay but a forlorn dream that never bears any fruit, and I will not make anything of the talents God gave me, and I will be judged like the worst criminal...
As I hear all this, I am humbled and cannot find any words to praise and thank my Saviour for my sickness. You, too, shall accept your affliction with patience and humility, believing that there is a reason and need for it. Pray to God, only asking that He reveals to you your affliction's wondrous depth and higher meaning.
Footnotes
- Gogol is referring to his Dead Souls.
