The pains of Saint Gilbert

           

 All those who are willing to follow Christ more closely will enter through the narrow door, this narrow door is the cross of Our Lord. The cross is a necessary condition for attaining salvation and life in fullness. There is no Christian without  cross.

St. Gilbert also experienced in his life some signs of his cross, his pains in the name of the Lord.          

The pains of Saint Gilbert are:

1 - his birth marked by a physical deformity;

2 - contempt in his childhood of his father and his servants;

3- leave your country to go to a foreign land;

4 - living in the bishop's house;

5- the drama of the foundation of his order;

6- the persecution and flight of his friend St. Thomas Becket;

7- the revolt of the lay brothers;

8- the scandal of a nun of Watton;

9- his blindness;

10- The pursuit of the king.                 

It is the ten pains that led to St. Gilbert to participate in a more intimate way of the mystery of the passion of Jesus Christ. With them, he was conforming his life more closely to the Lord's redemptive cross. He knew how to commune with his life and reality in the radical following of Christ in the imitation of his passion.