Appel

The first thing to realize before inwardly setting for oneself the path to be followed, before deciding in favor of this or that program of activity, study and life, is that our life, in all of its manifestations both interior and exterior, depends on God's grace and our humility.

The second thing is, that humility is an inimitable glory which imparts strength and anabiding inner smile radlating in the midst of every sadness and trial. For it is the soul's smileg confronted with the goodness, delicacy and ineffable fragrance of God's love.

The third thing is, that the soul which is marked by the love of God, is marked byeternal Love, in all its contacts and connections with the universe as a whole9 and simultaneously with its particular details. This soul carries within itself and engenders around it, sweet liberty, and knows what the love of God in all things signifies, and what it means to live all things in God and to love in God.

1. We must have confidence that sincere prayer to live according to God's will never stops short of bearing thoroughly positive fruit. Therefore, in the midst of every trial, every "closed horizon", every despair and every lapse, even physical, we must have faith in God and pray, without having so much as the least immediate consolation. But before long we will notice that a mysterious strength is spreading within us a ennobling our suffering and our love, our actions and our speech.

2. We must also have confidence in ourselves, in spite of all our faults, for we want to do everything and live everything in God. We must never make reference to the temporary impressions we have of ourself, even if they are very humiliating. This trust is the highest humility, because it is based on trust in God; it is the supreme confidence and humility of the "Magnificat".

3. We must berenewed every day and even every hour. And this may not always be awork of immediate consolation. But it is an action reaching towards the eternal. At every moment, consciously or unconsciously, in the midst of the sweetest consolations or the most barren trials, the soul carries out the offering of everything, absolutely everything, to Him, who is the cause and source of everything. This act of offering renews us, because it stabilizes us in the most perfect love, linking us, directly or indirectly, with the ineffable love of God for us.

4. In the midst of our consolations and in the midst of our barrenness of solitude and despair, we must think, with an interior "offering", of the sufferings of Christ and of the sadness and pain of all those who deeply love us. This thought-action is the highest manifestation of true life and true love. In these moments, we see, - as if far beyond a barren and dry landscape - the tender sun which speaks to us of truth and of ineffable eternal love. It is the sun of sweet and vibrant peace, peace of hope, mellow peace of infinite love.

5. Each day we must cultivate a deeper sense of responsibility, towards the graces and joy which are coming from God, towards suffering humanity,and towards the Church, which, in spite of all her wounds, contains the living heritage of the Redeemer. When we feel physically very tired, we must humbly accept it with patience and be sure that the best thing we can offer is this action, this thought-action, remembering the sufferings of Christ and the sorrow and weariness of those who love us and whom we deeply love. This brings a balm and a strengthening to our heart and body, a mysterious and sweet gladness which refreshes and renews us.

6. We must persevere, by prayer and constant endeavor of humility and true love, so as to become more generous and more just everyday. At the depths of human beings, even among those who are intelligent and sensitive, there is a spontaneous impulse which draws everything back to their own desire. And what is more, this impulse, in thought and in heart, impairs - for a short or long time - all notions of justice and love. It is an impulse which must be reversed and can be, by prayer, the act of offering without awaiting an immediate consolation, and through a desire and continual effort of eternal love. This sixth action can only be effected as a result of the five preceeding actions. The reversal of this motion which drives the individual more and more towards a central egotism, liberates the individual's love, and the soul enters the realm of liberty, which means becoming a "free-slave" of Truth and Love.

7. We must decide each time, as if it were the first, and strive each time to carry out everything commanded, pleasant or unpleasant, in a good mood both inwardly and outwardly, for love of God, for love of those around us, and in order to honor, in the depths of our soul and thought, any major feelings, such as holy eternal friendship. Each time that we succeed a little more in this process, we should go before the Blessed Sacrament and give thanks to God, because the "bad mood" even if unnoticed by others, is a calamity and blasphemy towards the generosity of God, and also towards those who love us and labor for us and with us.

8. We must decide each time, and tirelessly so, never to allow a sense of right to establish itself in our soul, but on the contrary, that of obligation. This is the limpid royal secret, the secret of strength and infinite love of the children of God. That is why the movement of the reversal of the sixth action is required. Without that, not only is the soul unable to act, but it cannot even grasp the importance and the deeply joyous and free nature of the replacement of the sense of right by that of obligation through duty and love. The obligation through love induces in the soul the deep joy of liberty.

9. We must give thanks for every grace, for every truth perceived, for every sunlit landscape, for every inner victory won, for every beloved presence, for all music, for every word which reveals the joyful mystery of creation, for the fact that we exist, for the love that we have received and that we are receiving, for love we have felt and are feeling, for the stars, lakes, watersprings, for the martyrs, seasons, birds, animals, for the bread that we eat. And above all, endless thanksgiving for the Blessed Sacrament which renews our life and makes us live all things in their eternity.

10. We must offer through prayer and by acts of love and kindness as deep and manifest as possible, a conscious resistance toall feelings of envy or jealousy. Sometimes these gnawings occur in the guise of melancholy “of being misunderstood”, and lead us to the point of forgetting our mission, our transcendant love of God and in God; to the point of forgetting Christ and his friends, some of whom love us unconditionally, as the Master. When such a negative feeling is felt, we must, immediately, as if we were obeying an oath, go, if possible, before the Blessed Sacrament and pray. We must not pray with only a vague purpose of being helped, but with the intention, humbly admitted before God, of being healed of this weakness which perverts the love of God, of Truth, and of every being and thing. We can feel ourselves faint with disgust of self or from the burning of these feelings which sometimes may appear insuperable. We must not fear; we must be decided in advance to go forth "to faint", so to speak, but never to accept that we cannot be healed, or that we are of an inferior constitution, incapable of rising above such a bent or such temptations. Pray with the unwavering certainty that God is there, and that grace is stronger than sin. And without understanding it, little by little, we shall enter into a kind of sacred universality which disperses doubts and restores our confidence and liberates us from the morbid fixedness of envy, doubt and jealousy. We experience ourself as a tiny being, settled forever in the certainty of the love of God and in God.

11. We must reject any consideration or criterion contrary to holy liberty. No fear, no social regards, no false dignity must determine our decisions, choices and our basic actions. We must humbly abandon ourself to God and only judge or choose as a child of God. Everything we do, every path we choose must be the outcome of such abandon and inward sincerity. And in this way every day we gain more in joy, in balance of peace.

12. We must meditate. That is the initial and perpetual action; to meditate every day, whether in immobility or in acting and doing exterior things, on two main realities: On the Cross of Christ and on the mystery of nature's greatness; on the scarlet, luminous sacrifice and on the poignant nostalgia of the signs of nature, on the mysteries of life, of things and of beings.

We must meditate without anguish, without intemperance, without disorderly elation, but also without lukewarmness, without drowsiness; we must meditate with sweet patience, full of promises of infinite love issuing from the Cross and from the Heart of Christ and narrated also by all the brilliancy, all the purity and goldenness of nature, and by all the holy silences and all the murmurs of eternal love of the heart of a man who is free in God. Never cease to meditate. But it must not be thought that meditation is an intellectual effort. On the contrary, meditation is an opening of the heart to the Truth of God and a loving availability for sacrifice for the love of God, and in God. Pure meditation is continual; itdrives away the phantoms of doubt and fear; it is peaceful anticipation of the infinite and tender mercies of the Creator. Meditation in the infinite love of the Creator is peaceful expectation and inward rejoicing in God’s friendship and that of God’s friends.