Walking Straight on the Road to Heaven
Happy are those who walk straight on the road to heaven without losing their time in thinking whether or not they are advancing. Go forward always and make no reflections on self. God leads you by the hand. Be quite confident that if you persevere you will make a happy journey. Continue to live joyously. Your fears are nothing but temptations….
When the time for placing ourselves in the presence of His Divine goodness to speak alone to Him alone is come, which we call prayer, the sole presence of our spirit before His and of His before ours, forms the prayer, whether we have good thoughts and good sentiments, or whether we have not. It is only necessary, with all simplicity, without making any violent effort of spirit, to keep ourselves before Him, with motions of love and the attention of our whole soul, without any voluntary distractions….
We think not enough of this truth, that God is present with us, that He sees our thoughts, even long before we have them. That He knows what we think and shall think better than we ourselves, that He sees the folds and recesses of our heart and of this other truth, that nothing happens to us but by the order of Providence. We should all be saints if we well apprehended these truths. And truly, it is a great consolation to know that God sees the bottom of our heart….
Here is a little model of what we should do when we are taken by surprise as we row peacefully in our little boat. When all our emotions arise to stir up a great internal storm that seems certain to overwhelm us or drag us after it, we must not wish to calm this tempest ourselves. Rather, we must gently draw near the shore, keeping our will firmly in God, and coast along with the little waves; by humble knowledge of ourselves, we will reach God, who is our sure port. Let us go gently along without agitation or anxiety and without giving in to our emotions….
Tell me, if you were mothers of families, would you send your servants and your children to work in the fields or prune the vines without providing them with the tools necessary for doing what you wanted them to do? Are we to think that God asks us to do something and does not at the same time give us the assistance necessary for carrying out His commands? No, God is never wanting to us….
From “On the Go with St Jane Francis de Sales” www.oblates.org (2007)
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