"Our confidence in
God must be founded on His infinite goodness and on the merits of the Passion
and death of our Lord Jesus Christ, with
this condition on our part: that we should preserve and recognize in ourselves
an entire and firm resolution to belong wholly to God, and to abandon
ourselves in all things, and without any reserve, to His Providence.
Observe that I do not
say that we must feel this resolution to belong wholly to God, but only that
we must have it and recognize it in ourselves; we must not concern ourselves with what we feel or do not
feel, since the greater part of our feelings and satisfactions are only the
movements of self-love.
Neither must it be
supposed that in all this practice of abandonment and indifference, we shall
never have desires contrary to the will of God, or that nature will never
shrink with repugnance from the dispositions of His good pleasure, for these
will often occur.
The virtues of
abandonment and indifference reside in the higher region of our soul; the
lower region, generally speaking, has nothing to do with them.
We must remain at
peace, and paying no attention whatever to what that lower nature desires, we
must embrace the divine will and unite ourselves to it—whatsoever this may
entail.
There are very few
persons who reach this height of perfect self-renunciation; nevertheless, we
must all aim at it, each according to his little measure."
[The Art of Loving
God by St. Francis de Sales]
May God Be Praised!
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