We must show charity towards the
sick, who are in greater need of help. Let us take them some small gift if they are poor,
or, at least, let us go and wait on them and comfort them.
If we should be saved and become
saints, we ought always to stand at the gates of the Divine Mercy to beg and pray for, as
an alms, all that we need.
He Who does not acquire the love of
God will scarcely persevere in the grace of God, for it is very difficult to renounce sin
merely through fear of chastisement.
When we hear people talk of riches,
honors and amusements of the world, let us remember that all things have an end, and let
us then say: "My God, I wish for You alone and nothing more."
He who trusts himself is lost. He who
trusts in God can do all things.
He who communicates most frequently
will be freest from sin, and will make farthest progress in Divine Love.
I love you, Jesus my love, I love You
more than myself. I repent with my whole heart for having offended You. Never permit me to
separate myself from You again. May I love You always, and then do with me as You will.
All holiness and perfection of soul
lies in our love for Jesus Christ our God, Who is our redeemer and our supreme good.
Has not God in fact won for Himself a claim on all our love? From all eternity He has
loved us. And it is in this vein that He speaks to us: "O man, consider carefully that I first loved you. You had not yet appeared
in the light of day, not did the world yet exist, but already I loved you. From all
eternity I have loved you."
Since God knew that man is enticed by favors, He wished to
bind him to His love by means of His gifts: I
want to catch men with the snares, those chains of love in which they allow themselves to
be entrapped, so that they will love Me. And all the
gifts which He bestowed on man were given to this end. He gave him a soul, made in His
likeness. He endowed him with memory, intellect and will; He gave him a body equipped with
the senses. It was for him that He created heaven and earth and such an abundance of
things. He made all these things out of love for man, so that all creation might serve
man, and man in turn might love God out of gratitude for so many gifts.
But He did not wish to give us only beautiful creatures; the truth is that to win for
Himself our love, He went so far as to bestow upon us the fullness of Himself. The eternal
Father went so far as to give us His only Son. When He saw that we were all dead through
sin and deprived of His grace, what did He do? He sent His beloved Son to make reparation
for us and to call us back to a sinless life.
What folly it would be for travellers
to think only of acquiring dignities and possessions in the countries through which they
had to pass, and then to reduce themselves to the necessity of living miserably in their
native lands, where they must remain during their whole lives! And are not they fools who
seek after happiness in this world, where they will remain only a few days, and expose
themselves to the risk of being unhappy in the next, where they must live for eternity?
We do not fix our affections on borrowed goods, because we know that they must soon be
returned to the owner. All earthly goods are lent to us: it is folly to set our heart on
what we must soon quit. Death shall strip us of all. The acquisitions and fortunes of this
world all terminate in a dying grasp, in a funeral, in a descent into the grave. The house
which you have built for yourself you must soon give up to others.
God says to each of us:
"Give Me your heart, that is, your will." We, in turn, cannot offer anything more precious than to say:
"Lord, take possession of us; we give our whole will
to You; make us understand what it is that You desire of us, and we will perform it."
If we would give full satisfaction to the heart of God, we must bring our own will in
everything into conformity with His; and not only into conformity, but into uniformity
also, as regards all that God ordains. Confirmity signifies the joining of our own will to
the will of God; but uniformity signifies, further, our making of the divine and our own
will one-will-only, so that we desire nothing but what God desires, and His will becomes
ours. This is the sum and substance of that perfection to which we ought to be ever
aspiring; this is what must be the aim of all we do, and of all our desires, meditations
and prayers. For this we must invoke the assistance of all our patron saints and our
guardian angels, and, above all, of our divine mother Mary, who was the most perfect
saint, because she embraced most perfectly the divine will.
