3,740 reflections
Ah, my Lord and my God! How many go to You looking for their own consolation and gratification and desiring that You grant them favors and gifts, but those wanting to give You pleasure and something at a cost to themselves, setting aside their own interests, are few.
DN 2, 19:4
Our Lord needs from us neither great deeds nor profound thoughts. Neither intelligence nor talents. He cherishes simplicity.
But we think we are giving God everything, whereas what we are really offering Him is the revenue or the fruits of our land while keeping the stock and the right of ownership of it in our own hands.
I give Him my body with all its strength, without the least reservation of myself. I give Him my soul with all its powers and faculties. In a word I give my entire being, desiring only one thing: that my life may be from now on incense perpetually rising toward God in order to please Him.
O Lord, what does it matter, when I can retire within myself, enlightened by faith, whether I feel or don't feel, whether I am in light or darkness, enjoy or do not enjoy? I am struck by a kind of shame at making any distinction between such things...Help me to exalt You...above the sweetness and consolations which flow from You, because I have resolved to pass by all else in order to be united with You.
Thus you must undertake all things, agreeable or disagreeable, for the sole purpose of pleasing God through them.
Love is swift, sincere, pious, pleasant and delightful; strong, patient, faithful, prudent, long-suffering, courageous, and never seeking itself: for where a man seeks himself, there he falls from love.
Today we will not spread the message through discussion- people no longer believe in it- not even through good
works! The best means is through the witness of someone who is possessed and captivated by God; who by their
words and behavior allow God to be seen.
Only at the moment in which the soul for love of God divests itself of all that is not God - and love is just this! - can it be enlightened and transformed in God.
All the things that God disposes are as so many steps of that mysterious stairway that leads us to the eternal possession of our much desired end (eternal life). For this let us accept everything with indifference from the hand of God, and we shall be happy.
As soon as I am pitied and flooded with attentions, I no longer have joy.
It's so simple to love. It's surrendering yourself to all His desires, just as Jesus surrendered Himself to those of the Father.
