Mar

18

Following Jesus

Posted By toGodalone | Filed Under Quotes & Excerpts, Uncategorized 

From the book Saint John of the Cross for Every Day edited by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD

These souls will give their life’s blood to anyone who serves God, and they will do whatever they can to help others serve him.

They become unhappy and peevish owing to a lack of the consolation they desire to have in spiritual things.

Their eyes are fixed only on God, on being his friend and pleasing him.

If the inordinate love increase, then, as will be seen, the soul will grow cold in the love of God, owing to the recollection of that other love, forget him-not without the feeling of some remorse of conscience. On the other hand, as the love of God increases, the soul will grow cold in the inordinate affection and come to forget it.

Through a certain indiscreet zeal they become angry over the sins of others, reprove these others, and sometimes even feel the impulse do so angrily, which in fact they occasionally do, setting themselves up as lords of virtue.

Many of these beginners will make numerous plans and great resolutions,but since they are not humble and have no distrust of themselves, the more resolves they make the more they break, and the greater becomes their anger.

Some, however, are so patient about their desire for advancement that God would prefer to see them a little less so.

But corporal penance without obedience is no more than a penance of beasts. And like beasts, they are motivated in these penances by an appetite for the pleasure they find in them.

Some are very insistent that their spiritual director allow them to do what they themselves want to do….They are under the impression that they do not serve God when they are not allowed to do what they want.

In receiving communion they spend all their time trying to get some feeling and satisfaction rather than humbly praising and reverencing God dwelling with them.

They cannot bear to hear others being praised without contradicting and undoing these compliments as much as possible.

If they do not receive in prayer the satisfaction they crave-for after all it is fit that God withdraw this so as to try them-they do not want to return to it, or at times they either give up prayer or go to it begrudgingly.

All her[the bride's] words, thoughts, and works are of God and directed toward him without any of the former imperfections.

Everything I do, I do with love, and everything I suffer, I suffer with the delight of love.

Even the very exercise of prayer and communion with God, in which she was accustomed to considerations and methods, is now wholly the exercise of love.

My beloved, all that is rough and toilsome I desire for your sake, and all that is sweet and pleasant I desire for your sake.

This soul indeed, lost to all things, and won over to love, no longer occupies her spirit in anything else.

Saint John of the Cross, pray for us.

Mama Mary, pray for us.

Holy Spirit, teach us wisdom and love.

Jesus, Mary and Joseph, we love you, pray for us.

Divine Mercy of Jesus, I trust in You.

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