If we remain attentive to the truth of the mysteries which Our Lord teaches us in prayer, how happy we will be!
When we see Him dying upon the Cross for us, what does He not teach us?
“I have died for you,” He says, this Sovereign Lover; “what does My death require but that, as I have died for you, you also should die for Me, or at least live only for Me?” (2 Cor. 5. 14-15).
Oh, how powerfully this truth moves our will to love dearly Him who is so lovable and so worthy of our love!
Truth is the object of the understanding, and love that of the will.
As soon as our understanding learns the truth that Our Lord died for love us, ah, our will is immediately inflamed, conceiving great affection and desire to return this love as much as possible.
These affections make us burn with the desire to please this Sacred Lover so much that nothing is too difficult to do our to suffer; nothing seems impossible….
That is good. Persevere in that truth and all will be well. But we do not!
From this truth, which we have learned in prayer, we turn to vanity in action.
We are angels in prayer and often devils in conversation and action, offending this same God whom we have recognized as being so lovable and so worthy of being obeyed.
We will certainly deserve great punishment if, having known that we are so dearly loved by our good Saviour, we nevertheless are so ungrateful as not to love Him with all heart and power, nor follow with all our strength and all our care the examples He has given us in His life, passion and death.
[...] To avoid such a predicament, my dear souls, we must know how we are to hear and accept God’s word.
We must prepare to ourselves to hear it with the attention it deserves, not as if it were just any other word.
With our hearts thus opened before God, and with the good disposition to profit from what He will say to us, let us remain attentive.
Remember, it is His Majesty who speaks to us and makes known His will.
Thus, with a spirit of devotion and attention, let us hear the truths which the preacher proposes to us.
In obedience let us submit ourselves to the things that are taught us concerning God’s will for our perfection and spiritual advancement.
Let us listen to them and read them with the determination to profit from them.
Francis de Sales (1567-1622): From a Sermon given on Passion Sunday, 1622, (abridged from The Sermons of St. Francis de Sales for Lent. Ed. Fr. Lewis S. Fiorelli, O.S.F.S. Trans. the Nuns of the Visitation. TAN Books, Rockford, Ill 1987)
mmmppph. I thought he was supposed to be the Soothing Doctor.
(I did giggle slightly reading this, the bit about the swooning with good intentions and then being worser than worse in fact
)
I can imagine someone like John Cassian saying “well, that’s because our swooning with good intentions is actually vainglory, and God allows us to fall into being worser than worse in order to cure us of this”. Or something to that effect.
Probably. But then one thinks “well, it might be vainglory, but I don’t think so, after all, I know fine well that none of it is likely to happen, but I still definitely want to do all those good things” etc., and spend ages thinking about it. Which is sometimes helpful, I suppose, but just laughing at one’s own worserness is also fairly effective and takes less time
Did I ever send you a link to The Virtue of Humour in the Service of Faith? (from the book by Fr Tadeusz Dajczer know variously in English as Inquiring Faith or Gift of Faith)
I don’t recall you sending me that link. It sounds interesting.
mouse over the title of the book in my previous comment
Mousing over the link highlights it, but when I click it nothing happens (and the pointy hand thing never appears). Could you send the linl by email?