Preachers and directors of souls do good only in proportion to their union with Jesus. Before this can take place, you must act as if Jesus were always visibly present to you in a natural way, whereas His presence is supernatural. Jesus has bestowed more graces on you than on many others and He will give you still more, but in return He hopes to find in you a soul devoted to Him and ready for any sacrifice.Ībove all, He wants of you great love, and when you have fought against yourself and your failings and acted in a spirit of profound faith, then faith will seem a reality. But no, He prefers your own effort s and He wants you to see for yourself how hard and rugged is the way to perfection.īe very generous. In a few hours, or even in the twinkling of an eye, Jesus could bring you the summit of perfection which He desires for you. It is His love that arranges everything for the benefit of His friends. See everything as coming from His bounty, whether He afflicts or consoles you. Jesus should be a sufficient attraction for you to prevent your being hindered by anything whatsoever outside of Him. Have a large heart and pass over all these little miseries without even noticing them. Do not lest yourself be caught in these meshes. The devil makes use of these little straws to check the progress of a soul and obstruct all the good that she is called to do. Oh, if only you knew how paltry these little nothings are about which some make such a fuss. We are obliged to see and hear many things and to act as if we had neither seen nor understood. We shall never be sorry for having kept silent. That is to say, we must hear many things that we could repeat but which are far better kept to ourselves. To be happy in religion we should be deaf, dumb and blind. This is why the graces we often ask remain ineffective. They are wanting in confidence and yet Jesus only grants our prayers according to the ardor of our desires and the strength of our love. Yes, very few people pray as Jesus wants them to pray. Each one measures it according to his way of thinking and this way is wrong. I people only took the trouble to think about it sometimes, it would be enough to make them all saints, but they do not sufficiently know the merciful goodness of the Heart of Jesus in the world. You will never be able to understand well enough the goodness of God. On your part love her with all your heart and do all you can to procure her the greatest possible glory. He is so little loved by the world and so outraged by it.
Therefore, prepare yourself by a redoubling of your fervor, but above all, love Jesus. Jesus has many graces to give you during Lent. Do not let any opportunity to mortify self pass by, especially interior mortification. God seeks souls empty of self so as to fill them with His love. One must be very interior on order not to take for oneself any of the praise given one. Sometimes even a tiny sacrifice, which was known only to God and to the soul, may be far more meritorious than a great one that was loudly applauded. God does not regard great acts or heroic deeds as much as He does simple actions or small sacrifices, provided these are done with love for Him.
Having done this, try to please Him in everything without troubling yourself about anything else. You must act with Jesus as a little child does with its mother, trusting in His goodness and placing all your spiritual and temporal interest with great confidence in His Divine Hands. You must go to Him, therefore, with good will, always ready to sacrifice yourself to please Him. Certainly you must examine your actions each day to be able to do better in the future, but this must not be at the expense of the soul. And we are separated from Him through our own fault.Īfter an action you must not waste your time going over it to examine if you have done well or ill. Each soul is tormented according to its guilt, but all have one common sorrow that surpasses the rest, the absence of Jesus who is our very element, our life, our all. Here the souls are lost, drowned as it were, in the Divine Will and God alone can soften their pains. On earth, God sometimes allows us to be consoled in our sufferings of soul or body by the heart of a friend, but then again if the love of Jesus does not fill that heart, the consolations are vain. In Purgatory our only consolation, our only hope is in God alone. Sister Mary of the Cross: “Do the souls in Purgatory console each other mutually?”
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