Jacques Philippe Quotes

Ultimately, we can really forgive people only because Christ rose from the dead; his Resurrection is the guarantee that God can cure every wrong and every hurt.

I’m not going to spend my life denouncing sin. That would be doing it too much honor. I would rather encourage good than condemn evil.

In order to resist fear and discouragement, it is necessary that through prayer - through a personal experience of God re-encountered, recognized and loved in prayer - we taste and see how good the Lord is (Psalm 34).

Faith and hope are provisional; they exist only for this earth and will pass away. In heaven, faith will be replaced by sight, and hope by possession; only love will never pass away.

We do not have to become saints by our own power; we have to learn how to let God make us into saints.

The human heart is certainly an abyss of misery and sin, but God lies in its depths.

No circumstance in the world can ever prevent us from believing in God, from placing all our trust in him, from loving him with our whole heart, or from loving our neighbor. Faith, hope, and charity are absolutely free, because if they are rooted in us deeply enough, they are able to draw strength from whatever opposes them! If someone sought to prevent us from believing by persecuting us, we always would retain the option of forgiving our enemies and transforming the situation of oppression into one of greater love. If someone tried to silence our faith by killing us, our deaths would be the best possible proclamation of our faith! Love, and only love, can overcome evil by good and draw good out of evil.

One of the petitions we make to God most often should be: “Inspire me in all my decisions, and never let me neglect any of your inspirations.

We should fight, not to attain holiness as a result of our own efforts, but to let God act in us without our putting up any resistance against him; we should fight to open ourselves as fully as possible to his grace, which sanctifies us.

There are many souls who think they do not have prayer, yet they have much; and, on the contrary, others who think they have much prayer but have very little.

The sign of spiritual progress is not so much never falling as it is being able to lift oneself up quickly after one falls.

This is why humility, spiritual poverty, is so precious: it locates our identity securely in the one place where it will be safe from all harm. If our treasure is in God, no one can take it from us. Humility is truth. I am what I am in God’s eyes: a poor child who possesses absolutely nothing, who receives everything, infinitely loved and totally free. I have received everything in advance from the freely bestowed love of my Father, who said to me definitively: “All that is mine is yours.”5

There are two things to be aware of if the fight against evil inclinations is to have any chance of success. First, our efforts will never be sufficient on their own. Only the grace of Christ can win us the victory. Therefore our chief weapons are prayer, patience, and hope. Second, one passion can only be cured by another - a misplaced love by a greater love, wrong behavior by right behavior that makes provisions for the desire underlying the wrongdoing, recognizes the conscious or unconscious needs that seek fulfillment and either offers them legitimate satisfaction or transfers them to something compatible with the person's calling.

Derrida s’intéressait moins au roman qu’à l’écriture, et ce qui l’a fasciné c’est le fait que j’ai fait de l’écriture un roman.

God would spare us, if He could, all these trials, but they are necessary in order that we should be convinced of our complete powerlessness to do good by ourselves.

God calls us to perfection, but he is not a perfectionist. And perfection is reached not so much by external conformity to an ideal as by inner faithfulness to God’s inspirations.

the more we confidently entrust the future to God, without trying to know it or master it, the more secure and peaceful we are.

our inability to love comes most often from our lack of faith and our lack of hope.

Our Lord is always ready to lift us up again when we fall, and he even finds a way to make our falls beneficial to us if after them we turn back to him with a humble, trusting heart.

Love is also a decision. Sometimes it comes spontaneously, but very often loving people will mean choosing to love them. Otherwise love would be no more than emotion, even selfishness, and not something that engages our freedom.

The more God is at the center of our lives, and the more we expect everything from him and him alone, the better chance our human relationships will have of being well-balanced and happy.

Real freedom does not mean being ruled by one’s impulses from one moment to the next. Just the opposite. Being free means not being a slave to one’s moods; it means being guided in a course of action by the fundamental choices one has made, choices one does not repudiate in the face of new circumstances.

Even if you have suffered, even if you have sometimes been disappointed by life, even if, at certain times, you had the feeling that God was very far away (we all have this feeling when living through a time of trial) or had abandoned you, in spite of all of that, never doubt God’s love, never doubt his faithfulness.

Consider the surface of a lake, above which the sun is shining. If the surface of the lake is peaceful and tranquil, the sun will be reflected in this lake; and the more peaceful the lake, the more perfectly will it be reflected. If, on the contrary, the surface of the lake is agitated, undulating, then the image of the sun can not be reflected in it. It is a little bit like this with regard to our soul in relationship to God. The more our soul is peaceful and tranquil, the more God is reflected in it, the more His image expresses itself in us, the more His grace acts through us.

The Lord can leave us wanting relative to certain things (sometimes judged indispensable in the eyes of the world), but He never leaves us deprived of what is essential: His presence, His peace and all that is necessary for the complete fulfillment of our lives, according to His plans for us.

Perfectionism doesn't have much to do with sanctity.

Resentment attacks our vital forces and does us much harm. When someone has made us suffer, our tendency is to keep the memory of the wrong alive in our minds, like a “bill” we will produce in due time to demand settlement. Those accumulated bills end up poisoning our lives. It is wiser to cancel every debt, as the Gospel invites us to. In return, we will be forgiven everything, and our hearts will be set free, whereas nurturing resentment toward others closes us to the positive things they could contribute to us.

Christians are not people who follow a set of rules. Christians are, first and foremost, people who believe in God, hope for everything from him, and want to love him with all their hearts and to love their neighbors. The commandments, prayer, the sacraments, and all the graces that come from God (including the loftiest mystical experiences) have just one purpose: to increase our faith, hope, and love.

We need to note this important point: A divine inspiration can disturb us to begin with, but to the extent that we do not refuse it, but open ourselves to it and consent to it, little by little it will establish peace in us.

The highest and most fruitful form of human freedom is found in accepting, even more than in dominating. We show the greatness of our freedom when we transform reality, but still more when we accept it trustingly as it is given to us day after day. It is natural and easy to go along with pleasant situations that arise without our choosing them. It becomes a problem, obviously, when things are unpleasant, go against us, or make us suffer. But it is precisely then that, in order to become truly free, we are often called to choose to accept what we did not want, and even what we would not have wanted at any price. There is a paradoxical law of human life here: one cannot become truly free unless one accepts not always being free! To achieve true interior freedom we must train ourselves to accept, peacefully and willingly, plenty of things that seem to contradict our freedom. This means consenting to our personal limitations, our weaknesses, our powerlessness, this or that situation that life imposes on us, and so on. We find it difficult to do this, because we feel a natural revulsion for situations we cannot control. But the fact is that the situations that really make us grow are precisely those we do not control.

«Se me han dado todos los bienes desde el momento en que ya no los he buscado».

Do everything with the greatest possible calm and serenity and out of the greatest, purest and holiest love of Jesus and Mary.

There are many souls who think they do not have prayer, yet they have much; and, on the contrary, others who think they have much prayer but have very little. In

If you are wondering what penance to take up next Lent, I suggest this one: try to be joyful, happy, and to thank God all the time. Nothing will do you as much good as that.

The two main signs of pride are despising others and getting discouraged.

The most important criterion for discerning divine inspirations is the one that Jesus himself gives us in the Gospel: “A tree is known by its fruit.” An inspiration from God, if we follow it, will produce sound fruit: the fruits of peace, joy, charity, communion, and humility.

If trust disappears when we do wrong, it shows that our trust was based on ourselves and our deeds. Discouragement is a clear sign that we've put our trust in ourselves and not at all in God.

Another characteristic of God’s Spirit is that, while enlightening us and impelling us to act, he imprints our souls with a deep sense of humility. He makes us do good in such a way that we are happy to do it, but without any presumptuousness, self-satisfaction, or vanity. We see quite clearly that the good that we do does not come from ourselves but from God.

The point is to move from "Why?" to "How?" The real question isn't "Why is this happening to me?" but "How should I live through these things?" How am I called to face this situation? What call to growth is being made to me through this? That question will always get an answer.

True freedom is not so much something man wins for himself; it is a free gift from God, a fruit of the Holy Spirit, received in the measure in which we place ourselves in a relationship of loving dependence on our Creator and Savior. This is where the Gospel paradox is most apparent: “Whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.”7 In other words, people who wish to preserve and defend their own freedom at any cost will lose it, but those willing to “lose” it by leaving it trustingly in God’s hands will save it. Their freedom will be restored to them, infinitely more beautiful, infinitely deeper, as a marvelous gift from God’s tenderness. Our freedom is, in fact, proportionate to the love and childlike trust we have for our heavenly Father.

A necessary condition for interior peace, then, is what we might call goodwill. We could also call it purity of heart. It is the stable and constant disposition of a person who is determined more than anything to love God, who desires sincerely to prefer in all circumstances the will of God to his own, who does not wish to consciously refuse anything to God.

The proud person is unable to receive, because pride does not allow it. Only the humble person knows how to receive.

Nuestro deseo de Dios no es nada al lado del deseo que Dios tiene de nosotros. Nos ama y nos desea infinitamente, más de lo que podemos desearle y amarle.

She was there, God was there, and that was enough.

We can make our heart into an oratory, into which we withdraw from time to time, to spend time talking with him.

Mental prayer is the source of true happiness. Whoever practices it faithfully will not fail to “taste and see that the Lord is good

El amor, aunque pobre e impotente en apariencia, siempre es fecundo y no puede no serlo porque participa del mismo ser y de la vida misma de Dios.

True peace does not come as the result of a process of human reasoning. It can only come from having our hearts attached to the promises God makes us through his Word.

la paz interior no sólo es la condición del combate espiritual, sino que suele ser lo que está en juego.

Evil is a mystery, a scandal and it will always be so.

the sufferings of the present time simply don’t compare with the glory to come that will be revealed to us (Romans 8:18).

Even for those who abandon themselves to Him, God permits suffering; He leaves them wanting of certain things, in a manner sometimes painful.

For us believers, the essential reason by virtue of which we can always be at peace does not come from this world. My kingdom is not of this world (John 18:36).

If He permits suffering, then it is our strength to believe, as Thérèse of Lisieux says, that “God does not permit unnecessary suffering.

I keep these words in my heart, repeating often during the day: “Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.

Living in the present moment means accepting the poverty in us: not insisting on going over and over the past or taking control of the future, but contending ourselves with today.

una de las primeras condiciones de un buen Gobierno es la de tener gobernantes con el espíritu ágil, el alma serena y el corazón en paz.

... the Wisdom of God ... rules all things, because it is infinitely more powerful and more loving and, above all, more merciful than ours.

The wisdom of man can only produce works on a human level. Only the Wisdom of God can realize things divine, and it is to divine heights that it destines us.

What often blocks the action of God’s grace in our lives is less our sins or failings, than it is our failure to accept our own weakness—

Therese felt clearly that she could not become a saint through her own efforts alone. Her own merits or her good works could not save her. In this way she was simply agreeing with the message of the Gospel and of St. Paul: We are not saved by our deeds, by what we accomplish. We are saved by grace, by mercy, and this grace is received through faith and trust.

The worst pain of suffering lies in rejecting it. To the pain itself we then add rebellion, resentment, and the upset this suffering arouses in us. The tension within us increases our pain. But when we have the grace to accept a suffering and consent to it, it becomes at once much less painful. “Peaceful suffering is no longer suffering,” said the Curé of Ars, St. Jean-Marie Vianney.

Often, though, the calls we receive from God bear upon smaller, everyday things: an invitation to pardon, an act of confidence in a difficult situation, a service to render to someone, a moment of prayer…

Nevertheless, it seems to me that today’s believers need a presentation of the Church’s traditional teaching that is simple and easily accessible, adapted to today’s outlook and expressed in today’s language.

Learning to give and receive freely requires a long, laborious process of re-educating our minds, which have been conditioned by thousands of years of struggle for survival.16 The violent entry of divine revelation and the Gospel into the world is like an evolutionary ferment, intended to make our psychology “evolve” toward an attitude of free giving and free receiving—the attitude of the Kingdom because it is the attitude of love. This is a process of divinization, whose final goal is to love as God loves: “You must be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.”17 And this divinization, this becoming God-like, means becoming human in the truest sense! It is a marvelous, liberating evolution: but we can only enter into the new way of being through the destruction of many of our natural behaviors, a sort of death-agony.

All this means that if we want the (apparent) contradictions between God’s will and our freedom to be resolved, we ought to ask the Holy Spirit for the grace to love God more, and the problem will solve itself.

Hope consists, amidst radical poverty, of expecting everything from God with full confidence. God will give us his gifts not according to our virtues, our qualities, our merits, or our good deeds, but according to our hope.

The intelligence people at State were not the only ones who knew the French would have trouble. In Vietnam, General Jacques Philippe Leclerc, De Gaulle’s favorite general, landed to take charge of French forces. After a tour of the country he was fully aware of the political-military problems that lay ahead. Turning to his political adviser, Paul Mus, he said, “It would take five hundred thousand men to do it, and even then, it could not be done.

Every Christian must be thoroughly convinced that his spiritual life can in no way be viewed as the quiet unfolding of an inconsequential life without any problems; rather it must be viewed as the scene of a constant and sometimes painful battle, which will not end until death

The time spent in prayer should be adequate. Five minutes are not enough for God. Five minutes are what we give someone when we want to get rid of him or her. A quarter of an hour is the absolute minimum, and anyone who is able should not hesitate to spend an hour on prayer, or even more, every day.

Pay attention to these words: "Keep your soul at peace." It is an expression employed by our Divine Maser. Your soul should always be enclosed in itself - or better enclosed in Jesus Who dwells therein - not imprisoned or locked up under a key, but in gentle repose, kept in Jesus, Who holds it in His arms.

Observe this beautiful fact: By bringing us into communion with God, prayer makes us share in God’s creativity. Contemplation nourishes our creative faculties and our inventiveness, particularly in the realm of beauty. Contemporary art is cruelly lacking in inspiration and very often produces nothing but painful ugliness, when people are so thirsty for beauty. Only a renewal of faith and prayer will enable artists to rediscover the sources of true creativity, so that they will once again be able to provide people with the beauty they so badly need, as was done by Fra Angelico, Rembrandt, or Johann Sebastian Bach. 5.

In a vulnerable, wounded world like ours, where nevertheless the Holy Spirit is addressing all Christians with a ringing call to holiness and inspiring them with a desire to live out the Gospel message in all its depth, I think there is no better path than the one St. Thérèse of Lisieux offers us: her little way of trust and love.

La paz, que lleva consigo la alegría, el mundo no puede darla. —Siempre están los hombres haciendo paces, y siempre andan enzarzados con guerras, porque han olvidado el consejo de luchar por dentro, de acudir al auxilio de Dios, para que El venza, y conseguir así la paz en el propio yo, en el propio hogar, en la sociedad y en el mundo.

La libertad humana posee una grandeza increíble. Gracias a ella, el hombre no tiene el poder de cambiar cuanto le rodea, pero sí que dispone (lo cual es mucho mejor) de la capacidad de otorgarle un sentido a todo, ¡incluso a lo que carece de él! Aunque no siempre seamos dueños del transcurrir de nuestra vida, sí lo somos del sentido que le damos.

We have to fight them daily, like fleas, those many small worries about the morrow, for they sap our energies. We make mental provision for the days to come, and everything turns out differently, quite differently. Sufficient unto the day. The things that have to be done must be done, and for the rest we must not allow ourselves to become infested with thousands of petty fears and worries, so many motions of no confidence in God. Everything will turn out all right … Ultimately, we have just one moral duty: to reclaim large areas of peace in ourselves, more and more peace, and to reflect it towards others. And the more peace there is in us, the more peace there will also be in our troubled world.13

God is eternally present, eternally young, eternally new, and our past and future are his. He can forgive everything, purify everything, renew everything. “He will renew you in his love.”3 In the present moment, because of his infinitely merciful love, we always have the possibility of starting again, not impeded by the past, or tormented by the future.

one passion can only be cured by another—a misplaced love by a greater love, wrong behavior by right behavior that makes provisions for the desire underlying the wrongdoing, recognizes the conscious or unconscious needs that seek fulfillment and either offers them legitimate satisfaction or transfers them to something compatible with the person’s calling.

The experience of the Church and the saints4 demonstrates a general law: what comes from the Spirit of God brings with it joy, peace, tranquility of spirit, gentleness, simplicity, and light. On the other hand, what comes from the spirit of evil brings sadness, trouble, agitation, worry, confusion, and darkness. These marks of the good and the evil spirit are unmistakable signs in themselves.

Even in the natural order, all genuine love is a victory of weakness. Loving is not dominating or possessing, imposing oneself on the person loved. Loving means that one welcomes the other person without putting up any defenses. In return, one is certain of being welcomed totally by that person without being judged, condemned, or compared. There are no more trials of strength between two people who love each other.

Jesus does not need books or learned doctors to instruct souls. He who is the doctor of doctors teaches without any need of words. … I have never heard him speak, but I feel that he is in me, that at every moment he is guiding me, inspiring me with what I should say or do. Just when I need it, I discover lights that I had not seen before. It is not usually during my prayer that they are most abundant, but rather amidst my daily occupations.23 I find this passage tremendously significant. That is often the way things happen in our lives. Apparently nothing in particular happens during the actual time of prayer, but because we have been faithful to it, God instructs us in secret, he places things in us without our being aware of it. And when we need to give someone advice or have to make a decision, we receive a light there and then.

Giving God absolute first place in relation to every other reality (work, relationships, etc.) is the only way of establishing a right relationship to things that involves a genuine investment and a healthy detachment enabling us to safeguard our inner freedom and the unity of our lives. Otherwise we fall into indifference and carelessness or, just the opposite, into dependency, invasiveness, distraction, and needless anguish. The

There are times in every life when we find ourselves in situations of trial and difficulty, either affecting us or someone we love. We can do nothing. However much we turn things over and examine them from every angle, there is no solution. The feeling of being helpless and powerless is a painful trial, especially when it concerns someone close to us: to see someone we love in difficulties without being able to help is one of the bitterest sufferings there is.

We are not always masters of the unfolding of our lives, but we can always be masters of the meaning we give them. Our freedom can transform any event in our lives into an expression of love, abandonment, trust, hope, and offering. The most important and most fruitful acts of our freedom are not those by which we transform the outside world as those by which we change our inner attitude in light of the faith that God can bring good out of everything without exception.

The measure of Divine Providence in us depends on the degree of trust that we have in It. Do not anticipate the unpleasant events of this life by apprehension, rather anticipate them with the perfect hope that, as they happen, God, to Whom you belong, will protect you. He had protected you up to the present moment; just remain firmly in the hands of His providence and He will help you in all situations and at those times when you find yourself unable to walk, He will carry you. What should you fear, my dearest daughter, since you belong to God Who has so stronly assured us that for those who love Him all things turn into happiness. Do not think of what may happen tomorrow, because the same eternal Father Who takes care of you today, will take care of you tomorrow and forever. Either He will see that nothing bad happens to you or, if He allows anything bad to happen to you, He will give you the invincible courage to bear it. (St Francis de Sales)

What makes possible this inner illumination that gives us access to the riches of the Word? I think the essential thing is a genuine desire for conversion. If we read Scripture while praying, confident that God is awaiting us there, and in a sincere desire for his Word to touch our hearts, show us our sins, lead us to a true conversion, and if we are resolved to put into practice what he tells us, then Scripture will be illuminated for us. That is the main secret of exegesis. I

Etty Hillesum wrote: “I have gradually come to realize that on those days when you are at odds with your neighbors you are really at odds with yourself. ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’”28 Conversely, if we close our hearts against other people, make no effort to love them as they are, never learn to be reconciled with them, we will never have the grace to practice the deep reconciliation with ourselves that we all need. Instead we will be perpetual victims of our own narrow-heartedness and harsh judgments toward our neighbor.

God does not will evil or sin. Many things happen that God does not will. But he still permits them, in his wisdom, and they remain a stumbling block or scandal to our minds. God asks us to do all we can to eliminate evil. But despite our efforts, there is always a whole set of circumstances which we can do nothing about, which are not necessarily willed by God but nevertheless are permitted by him, and which God invites us to consent to trustingly and peacefully, even if they make us suffer and cause us problems. We are not being asked to consent to evil, but to consent to the mysterious wisdom of God who permits evil. Our consent is not a compromise with evil but the expression of our trust that God is stronger than evil. This is a form of obedience that is painful but very fruitful. It means that after we have done everything in our power, we are invited, faced with what is still imposed on our will by events, to practice an attitude of abandonment and filial trust toward our heavenly Father, in the faith that “for those who love God, everything works together for good.”12

Disappointment in a relationship with someone from whom we were expecting a lot (perhaps too much) can teach us to go deeper in prayer, in our relationship with God, and to look to him for that fullness, that peace and security, that only his infinite love can guarantee. Disappointments in relationships with other people oblige us to pass from “idolatrous” love to a love that is realistic, free, and happy. Romantic love will always be threatened with disappointments. Charity never is, because it “does not insist on its own way”54 or seek its own interest.

Consider the surface of a lake, above which the sun is shining. If the surface of the lake is peaceful and tranquil, the sun will be reflected in this lake; and the more peaceful the lake, the more perfectly will it be reflected. If, on the contrary, the surface of the lake is agitated, undulating, then the image of the sun can not be reflected in it. It is a little bit like this with regard to our soul in relationship to God. The more our soul is peaceful and tranquil, the more God is reflected in it, the more His image expresses itself in us, the more His grace acts through us.

Our Difficulty in Believing in Providence The first obstacle is that, as long as we have not experienced concretely the fidelity of Divine Providence to provide for our essential needs, we have difficulty believing in it and we abandon it. We have hard heads, the words of Jesus do not suffice for us, we want to see at least a little in order to believe! Well, we do not see it operating around us in a clear manner. How, then, are we to experience it? It is important to know one thing: We cannot experience this support from God unless we leave Him the necessary space in which He can express Himself. I would like to make a comparison. As long as a person who must jump with a parachute does not jump out into the void, he cannot feel that the cords of the parachute will support him, because the parachute has not yet had the chance to open. One must first jump and it is only later that one feels carried. And so it is in spiritual life: “God gives in the measure that we expect of Him,” says Saint John of the Cross. And Saint Francis de Sales says: “The measure of Divine Providence acting on us is the degree of confidence that we have in it.” This is where the problem lies. Many do not believe in Providence because they’ve never experienced it, but they’ve never experienced it because they’ve never jumped into the void and taken the leap of faith. They never give it the possibility to intervene. They calculate everything, anticipate everything, they seek to resolve everything by counting on themselves, instead of counting on God. The founders of religious orders proceed with the audacity of this spirit of faith. They buy houses without having a penny, they receive the poor although they have nothing with which to feed them. Then, God performs miracles for them. The checks arrive and the granaries are filled. But, too often, generations later, everything is planned, calculated. One doesn’t incur an expense without being sure in advance to have enough to cover it. How can Providence manifest itself? And the same is true in the spiritual life. If a priest drafts all his sermons and his talks, down to the least comma, in order to be sure that he does not find himself wanting before his audience, and never has the audacity to begin preaching with a prayer and confidence in God as his only preparation, how can he have this beautiful experience of the Holy Spirit, Who speaks through his mouth? Does the Gospel not say, …do not worry about how to speak or what you should say; for what you are to say will be given to you when the time comes; because it will not be you who will be speaking, but the Spirit of your Father will be speaking in you (Matthew 10:19)? Let us be very clear. Obviously we do not want to say that it is a bad thing to be able to anticipate things, to develop a budget or prepare one’s homilies. Our natural abilities are also instruments in the hands of Providence! But everything depends on the spirit in which we do things. We must clearly understand that there is an enormous difference in attitude of heart between one, who in fear of finding himself wanting because he does not believe in the intervention of God on behalf of those who lean on Him, programs everything in advance to the smallest detail and does not undertake anything except in the exact measure of its actual possibilities, and one who certainly undertakes legitimate things, but who abandons himself with confidence in God to provide all that is asked of him and who thus surpasses his own possibilities. And that which God demands of us always goes beyond our natural human possibilities!

When a person is faithful to his or her times of prayer, day after day, week after week, it’s like someone with a well in the garden that’s choked with rubbish—branches, leaves, stones, mud—but underneath is water, clean and pure. In spending time in prayer, you’re setting to work patiently to unblock the well. What comes up at the start is the mud and dirt: our wretchedness, worries, fears, guilt, self-blame—the things we normally avoid. Plenty of people run away from themselves. There’s a real fear of silence today! But those who have the courage to go forward into the desert end up finding an oasis.

Still, self-giving is not always so simple in practice. People sometimes give generously of themselves, without experiencing the happiness promised by the Gospel. Instead they encounter sorrow, fatigue, and frustration. Their own needs are forgotten; they themselves are ignored. We have all heard a generous person explode with anger and exclaim. “I’m fed up with waiting on everyone else, with having to do all the dirty work, with being taken for granted and never so much as hearing ‘thank you’!” Self-giving can end like that when it is not freely chosen or when it is chosen out of some motive other than disinterested love—fear of saying no and not being accepted, emotional dependence, a perfectionist streak rooted in pride, a sense of indebtedness, the notion that to save others we need to please them, or else the desire to teach others a lesson by shaming them. There is even such a thing as calculated generosity that resembles a kind of unconscious bargaining: I will give myself to you, provided you give me the emotional gratification or the ego boost that I crave. It is important to examine our motives and rid ourselves of such imperfect ones, so that our self-giving can become truly free and disinterested.

These certainties include fulfilling the duties of our state in life and practicing the essential points of every Christian vocation. There is a defect here that needs to be recognized and avoided: finding ourselves in darkness about God’s will on an important question—a large-scale vocational choice or some other serious decision—we spend so much time searching and doubting or getting discouraged, that we neglect things that are God’s will for us every day, like being faithful to prayer, maintaining trust in God, loving the people around us here and now. Lacking answers about the future, we should prepare to receive them by living today to the full.

The Bible is not a privileged possession of Protestants: all believers, absolutely, must be nourished on Scripture. ... We are constantly bombarded with messages of every kind. Only God's Word, passed on to us in a special way in Scripture, has the necessary depth, clarity, and authority to help us find our way. Only Scripture enables us to discover the truth, not as something abstract, but as God's presence in our lives and the very specific way he offers us day after day. ... This simple spiritual experience of discovering Holy Scripture as light, encouragement, and strength for our path today--for Scripture has an authority possessed by no human word, no human reasoning--is one all Christians can and should have.

In order to understand this, we can use an image (without exaggerating, as we should always avoid doing in making comparisons); but one that can be illuminating. Consider the surface of a lake, above which the sun is shining. If the surface of the lake is peaceful and tranquil, the sun will be reflected in this lake; and the more peaceful the lake, the more perfectly will it be reflected. If, on the contrary, the surface of the lake is agitated, undulating, then the image of the sun can not be reflected in it. It is a little bit like this with regard to our soul in relationship to God. The more our soul is peaceful and tranquil, the more God is reflected in it, the more His image expresses itself in us, the more His grace acts through us.

Those who travel with God feel free; they feel that they have nothing to fear, that they are not subject to control, but on the contrary that everything is subject to them because everything works together for their good, whether favorable or unfavorable circumstances, good or bad. They feel that everything belongs to them because they are God’s children; that nothing can limit them, because God belongs to them. They are not subject to conditions but always do what they want because what they want is to love, and that is always within their power. Nothing can separate them from the God they love; and they feel that even if they were in prison, they would be just as happy, because there is no way that any power in the world could take God away from them.

A person who does not pray habitually, no matter how believing or pious he may be, will not achieve full spiritual growth. Neither will he acquire peace of soul because he will always experience excessive scruples and never view things beyond their human or worldly significance. Thus, one will always suffer from vanity, selfishness, self-centeredness, ambition, meanness of heart, vileness of judgment, and a sickly willfulness and attachment to one’s opinions. A person who does not pray may acquire human wisdom and prudence, but not true spiritual freedom or that deep and radical purification of the heart. One will not be able to grasp the depths of divine mercy or know how to make it known to others. His judgment will always end up shortsighted, mistaken, and contemptible. One will never be able to tread God’s ways, which are far different from what many—even those who have committed themselves to a life in the spirit—conceive them to be.

And happily we cannot always understand! Otherwise, how would it be possible to allow the Wisdom of God to freely work according to His designs? Where would there be room for confidence? It is true that for many things we would not act as God would act! We would not have chosen the folly of the cross as a means of redemption! But fortunately it is the Wisdom of God and not ours that rules all things, because it is infinitely more powerful and more loving and, above all, more merciful than ours. While the Wisdom of God is incomprehensible in its ways, in the sometimes baffling manner in which it acts in us, then let us say that the Wisdom of God will also be incomprehensible in those things that it prepares for those who put their hope in it. For that which it prepares surpasses infinitely in glory and beauty that which we can imagine or conceive: What eye has not seen nor ear heard, what the human heart has not conceived, what God has prepared for those who love Him, this God has revealed to us through His Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:9). The wisdom of man can only produce works on a human level. Only the Wisdom of God can realize things divine, and it is to divine heights that it destines us. This is consequently what must be our strength when faced with the question of evil: not a philosophical response, but the confidence of a child in God, in His Love and in His Wisdom. The certitude that Now we know that God works in every way for the good of those who love Him and are called in accordance with His plan (Romans 8:28) and the sufferings of the present time simply don’t compare with the glory to come that will be revealed to us (Romans 8:18).

Many people think of themselves as original while merely conforming to trends.

That is accomplished by the gift of the Holy Spirit, who bestows true freedom, freedom proceeding from the Spirit, not from the Law or from the “flesh”—our wounded nature—as St. Paul says. True spontaneity comes from allowing ourselves to be led by the Spirit, for there is a convergence between what the Spirit desires and our most authentic personality: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17).

Human freedom is of absolutely unheard-of greatness. It does not confer the power to change everything,

Sometimes we think, consciously or subconsciously, that forgiving someone who has wronged us would mean pretending they had done nothing wrong—calling bad good, or condoning an act of injustice. But forgiving does not mean that. Truth mustn’t be mocked. Forgiving means saying: “This person has wronged me, but I don’t want to condemn him; I don’t want to identify him with his fault; I don’t want to take justice into my own hands. God is the only one who ‘searches mind and heart,’48 and ‘judges justly,’49 and I leave it to him to weigh this person’s actions and pronounce judgment. That is a difficult and delicate task that belongs to God, and I don’t want to take the burden of it on myself. What’s more, I don’t want to pass a final judgment with no appeal on the person who has hurt me. I want to look at him with eyes of hope, because I believe something can grow and change in him, and I continue to want his good. I also believe that from the evil done to me, even if it seems irremediable from a human viewpoint, God can draw good…” Ultimately, we can really forgive people only because Christ rose from the dead; his Resurrection is the guarantee that God can cure every wrong and every hurt.

Holiness is not the realization of a given model of perfection that is identical for everyone. It is the emergence of an absolutely unique reality that God alone knows, and that he alone brings to fruition. No individual knows what his own holiness consists of. Holiness is only revealed to us by degrees, as we journey on, and it is often something very different from what we imagine, so much so that the greatest obstacle on the path to holiness may be to cling too closely to the image we have of our own perfection.

What God wants is always different, always disconcerting; but ultimately it is infinitely more beautiful, because only God is capable of creating totally unique masterpieces, while we humans can only imitate.

We cannot give God greater proof of our fidelity than by renouncing and despising created things over and over again, to enjoy the Creator for just a single moment. Little by little, that exercise destroys the pride which can only continue to exist amidst creatures, and our frequent turnings to God progressively set us free from creatures.

Effort and contention constrict the soul, but a gentle repose, a peaceful manner of behaving and a steady, measured and quiet interior action expand it. (Francois-Marie-Jacob Libermann)

A Lodge inaugurated under the auspices of Rousseau, the fanatic of Geneva, became the center of the revolutionary movement in France, and a Prince of the blood-royal went thither to swear the destruction of the successors of Philippe le Bel on the tomb of Jacques de Molai. The registers of the Order of Templars attest that the Regent, the Duc d'Orleans, was Grand Master of that formidable Secret Society, and that his successors were the Duc de Maine, the Prince of Bourbon-Conde, and the Duc de Cosse-Briassac. The Templars comprotmitted the King; they saved him from the rage of the People, to exasperate that rage and bring on the catastrophe prepared for centuries; it was a scaffold that the vengeance of the Templars demanded. The secret movers of the French Revolution had sworn to overturn the Throne and the Altar upon the Tomb of Jacques de Molai. When Louis XVI. was executed, half the work was done; and thenceforward the Army of the Temple was to direct all its efforts against the Pope.

This is worth noting. Thérèse had a great love for Holy Scripture. All the lights that guided her along the way, all her great spiritual intuitions, she found in Scripture. Every time a question came up that upset her a little, she went to the Bible to find the answer. She received astonishing lights that enabled her to acquire a deep understanding of the Scriptures. On this point too, she anticipated Vatican II, which laid great stress on the importance of returning to the Bible if we want to be real Catholics.

All that is just to say that God’s will is where there is the maximum of love, but not necessarily where there is the maximum of suffering. There is more love in resting in trust than making ourselves suffer through worrying!

Toda moción divina, al tiempo que es luz para comprender lo que Dios desea, es fuerza para cumplirlo: luz que ilumina la inteligencia, y fuerza que anima a la voluntad.

every time we respond to a call from God, we receive grace and are interiorly strengthened. Because God is faithful: if he asks us to take this or that step forward, he comes to the aid of our weakness.

when we have a question to which we need to know the answer in order to do God’s will today, he always responds.

Con frecuencia nos inquietamos y nos alteramos pretendiendo resolver todas las cosas por nosotros mismos, mientras que sería mucho más eficaz permanecer tranquilos bajo la mirada de Dios y dejar que Él actué en nosotros con su sabiduría y su poder infinitamente superiores. Porque así dice el Señor, el Santo de Israel: En la conversión y la quietud está vuestra salvación, y la quietud y la confianza serán vuestra fuerza, pero no habéis querido (Is 30, 15).

El amor de Dios será siempre mayor que nuestras faltas.

Obviously, it is excellent to do good things such as prayer, fasting, devoting ourselves to the service of our neighbor, evangelizing, and so on. But it is extremely dangerous to identify ourselves with the spiritual good we are able to do. For this identity is still an artificial and fragile one that will collapse on the day one of our virtues fails or a particular spiritual talent into

much as we do, to be impatient with those who prevent us from carrying out a given project, and so forth.

Solo el perdón detiene la propagación del mal.

The two main signs of pride are despising others and getting discouraged.13 Those who are humble and accept their littleness don’t get discouraged because they put their trust in God and not in themselves.

Whatever our personal limitations and situations, we can all love right where we are: in the kitchen, the bathroom, the office—it makes no difference. What the Church needs most is genuine love. We attach too much importance to externals, actions, and visible effectiveness, whereas all that counts, all that really bears fruit in the Church, is the truth and purity and sincerity of love; that is what we should ask God for most of all and put into practice.

Instead of bearing your poverty as a handicap, an obstacle, accept it and welcome it as a grace.

El acto más elevado y fecundo de libertad humana reside antes en la aceptación que en el dominio.

We cannot experience this support from God unless we leave Him the necessary space in which He can express Himself.

He is not there because we deserve Him or feel His presence, but because he gave His promise: [Matthew 6:6]

The life of prayer is not the result of a technique, but a gift we receive.

Every single person, in accordance with his or her own personality, his or her own gifts and weaknesses, can have a deep prayer life by corresponding faithfully to God's grace.

We should not pray for the sake of the satisfactions or benefits we derive (even if they are immense) but mainly to please God, because he asks us to.

[The Accuser] makes it clear to us how imperfect and weak our love for God still is—how much self-seeking remains in our spiritual life

Remove this quote from your collection “[The Accuser] makes it clear to us how imperfect and weak our love for God still is—how much self-seeking remains in our spiritual life

[The Accuser] makes it clear to us how imperfect and weak our love for God still is—how much self-seeking remains in our spiritual life

worry and fear invade our hearts, we risk reacting poorly to the events facing us: we close ourselves off, we flee, we become aggressive or violent, or we make precipitous decisions that not only don’t resolve anything, but sometimes even augment the bad instead of diminishing it.

Time spent faithfully every day in mental prayer that is poor, arid, distracted, and relatively short is worth more, and will be infinitely more fruitful for our progress, than long, ardent spells of mental prayer from time to time, when circumstances make it easy.

Word, faith, trust, prayer and love allow us to welcome into our hearts God’s peace.

La fe supone una cierta forma de pobreza. Creer es aceptar no verlo todo siempre, no comprender siempre, caminar a menudo en la oscuridad. Es avanzar fiándose de otro, entregarse a una verdad que nos supera y que no dominamos. Es entrar en una forma de obediencia, confiar nuestra vida a la palabra de otro, entregarse. Abrahán, nuestro padre en la fe, partió sin saber adónde iba.

Si buscamos la paz como la da el mundo, si esperamos nuestra paz por las razones del mundo, motivos por los que, según la mentalidad que nos rodea, se puede estar en paz (porque todo va bien, no tenemos contrariedades, nuestros deseos están absolutamente satisfechos, etc.), es seguro que nunca la encontraremos, o que nuestra paz será extremadamente frágil y de corta duración.

San Juan de la Cruz expresa esta verdad en otros términos: «Se me han dado todos los bienes desde el momento en que ya no los he buscado».

queremos que cambie lo que nos rodea, que cambien las circunstancias, y tenemos la impresión de que, entonces, todo iría mejor. Pero eso suele ser un error: no son las circunstancias exteriores las que han de cambiar: en primer lugar ha de cambiar nuestro corazón, purificándose de su encierro, de su tristeza, de su falta de esperanza: «Bienaventurados los limpios de corazón porque ellos verán a Dios» (Mt 5, 8).

Don't be afraid of yourselves! Don't be afraid of all that you are, in your human reality, where God pitches his tent to dwell with you. God is incarnation. God's new name is Emmanuel, God with us: God with your reality. Open yourself to it without fear. Only in the measure you discover yourself will you discover the depths of his love. In the depths of what you are, you will experience that you a re not alone. Someone, lovingly, and mercifully, has entered into the mystery of your humanity, not as spectator, not as judge, but as someone who loves you, who offers himself to you, who espouses you to free you, save you, and heal you... To stay with you forever, love you, loving you!

But this rule is reversed for those whose hearts are far from God, who live in indifference and evil. The devil seeks to tranquilize such individuals, to keep them in a false sense of quietude, whereas the Lord, Who desires their salvation and conversion, will trouble and disquiet their consciences in an effort to get them to repent. One

The word that I spoke to you so often was that you should not be too particular in the exercise of virtues, rather that you should pursue them briskly, openly, naively, in an old-fashioned way, with liberty, sincerity and grosso modo. It is because I fear the spirit of constraint and melancholy. It is my wish that you should have a large and open heart on the way to our Lord.

If your feelings or your intelligence do not give God to you, faith will. It is enough to make a humble, sincere act of faith for you to be in contact with God from that moment, with absolute certainty. Faith, and faith alone, establishes real contact with the living presence of God. When

En determinados momentos de nuestra vida no podremos encontrar solos esa valiosa paz interior de la que tanto hemos hablado: necesitaremos la ayuda de alguien a quien abrir el alma.

En la incertidumbre (si continúa) hay que decir: haga lo que haga, estará bien, puesto que intento hacer el bien. Lo que nosotros consideramos bueno, Dios lo acepta y lo considera bueno. No nos entristezcamos si, después de cierto tiempo, vemos que esas cosas no son buenas. Dios mira la intención con la que empezamos y nos concederá la recompensa de acuerdo con esa intención. Es un principio que debemos seguir»

Señor ama más al que sabe decidir sin atormentarse demasiado aunque se sienta inseguro, y que se abandona confiadamente en Él con todas sus consecuencias, que al que se tortura indefinidamente para saber lo que Dios espera de él, y no se decide jamás. Porque en la primera actitud hay más abandono, más confianza y, por lo tanto, más amor que en la segunda. Dios ama a los que caminan con libertad de espíritu y no se entretienen demasiado en detalles nimios. El perfeccionismo tiene muy poco que ver con la santidad... Es

Si conociéramos mejor a los maestros espirituales cristianos, habría menos jóvenes deseosos de buscar gurús en la India para su sed de lo espiritual. .

«El bien que Dios hace lo hace por Él mismo, casi sin que nos demos cuenta. Hemos de ser más pasivos que activos».     2.

creemos que vencer en el combate espiritual significa librarnos de todos nuestros defectos, no sucumbir nunca a la tentación y dar fin a nuestras debilidades y nuestros fallos. Pero, ¡si en ese terreno somos vencidos inexorablemente! ¿Quién puede pretender no caer jamás? Ciertamente, eso no es lo que Dios exige de nosotros, pues Él conoce de qué hemos sido hechos, se acuerda de que no somos más que polvo (Sal 102). Por

Se puede decir que el medio más seguro de perder la paz es precisamente tratar de asegurar la propia vida con la única ayuda de medios humanos, de proyectos y decisiones personales, o apoyándose en otro.

not with his own strength, which would be quickly exhausted, but with the strength

La paz, que lleva consigo la alegría, el mundo no puede darla. —Siempre están los hombres haciendo paces, y siempre andan enzarzados con guerras, porque han olvidado el consejo de luchar por dentro, de acudir al auxilio de Dios, para que El venza, y conseguir así la paz en el propio yo, en el propio hogar, en la sociedad y en el mundo. —

¿por qué este modo de avanzar, basado en la paz, en la libertad, en el confiado abandono en Dios, en la aceptación serena de nuestras enfermedades e incluso de nuestras caídas, es el camino aconsejable? ¿Por qué es más acertado que la búsqueda de la voluntad de Dios que se lleva a cabo en medio de la preocupación, de los escrúpulos, de un deseo tenso e inquieto de perfección? Porque la única perfección verdadera es la del amor, y hay más amor de Dios en el primer modo de proceder que en el segundo.

según el Evangelio, no es más perfecto el que se comporta de un modo irreprochable, sino el que ama más. La

El que acepta ser débil, pequeño, caer con frecuencia, no ser nada a sus propios ojos y a los de los demás, sin preocuparse excesivamente por ello, pues le anima una gran confianza en Dios y sabe que su amor es infinitamente más importante y pesa mucho más que sus propias faltas e imperfecciones, ése ama más que aquel cuyo afán por su propia perfección le empuja al desasosiego. «Bienaventurados

Alcanzaremos la santidad el día en que nuestra impotencia y nuestra nada no sean un motivo de tristeza y de inquietud para nosotros, sino un motivo de paz y de alegría. Este

¡El alma se reeduca frecuentemente por medio del cuerpo! Las cosas pequeñas, hechas por amor y para agradar a Dios, son extremadamente provechosas para hacernos crecer: ese es uno de los secretos de la santidad de Santa Teresita de Lisieux. Y

Lo que nos falta es, sobre todo, la convicción de que «el amor de Dios saca provecho de todo, del bien y del mal que se encuentra en mí» (Santa Teresa de Lisieux, inspirándose en San Juan de la Cruz).

Creemos que está justificada nuestra preocupación por alguien que está en dificultades, que es una prueba del amor que sentimos por esa persona. Pero eso es falso. Generalmente, en esta actitud se oculta un gran amor propio. No soportamos el sufrimiento ajeno porque tememos sufrir nosotros: también en este caso nos falta confianza en Dios. Es

Es normal que nos sintamos profundamente afectados por el sufrimiento de un ser querido, pero si por este motivo nos atormentamos hasta el punto de perder la paz, significará que nuestro amor por esa persona no es plenamente espiritual, no es todavía un amor según Dios. Aún es un amor demasiado humano y sin duda egoísta, insuficientemente basado en una inquebrantable confianza en Dios. Para

con demasiada frecuencia nuestra actitud ante los que sufren en nuestro entorno está más condicionada por el temor que fundada en el amor. Una

«Cuanto hicisteis a uno de estos mis hermanos más pequeños, a mí me lo hicisteis». Esas palabras del Señor nos enseñan que «a la caída de la tarde nos examinarán en el amor» (San Juan de la Cruz), y en especial del amor a nuestros hermanos necesitados. Es una llamada a la compasión.

frecuentemente pecamos así: deseamos una cosa que es buena, incluso muy buena, pero la deseamos de un modo que es malo.

¡Cuanto más buena nos parece una cosa, más nos inquietamos y nos preocupamos por obtenerla! Como ya he dicho, debemos pues, no sólo verificar que las cosas que deseamos son buenas en sí mismas, sino también que es bueno nuestro modo de quererlas y buenas las disposiciones de nuestro corazón. Es decir, que nuestro querer debe seguir siendo sereno, pacífico, paciente, desprendido, abandonado en Dios. No debe ser un querer impaciente, demasiado precipitado, inquieto, irritable, etc.

¡Cuántas personas pierden la paz al pretender cambiar a toda costa a quienes les rodean! ¡Cuántas personas casadas se alteran y se irritan porque querrían que su cónyuge no tuviera este defecto o aquel otro! Por el contrario, el Señor nos pide que soportemos con paciencia los defectos del prójimo. Tenemos que razonar así: si el Señor no ha transformado todavía a esa persona, no ha eliminado de ella tal o cual imperfección, ¡es que la soporta como es!

Existe un principio fundamental que debe guiarnos cuando experimentemos a diario nuestras miserias y nuestras caídas: no se trata tanto de hacer unos esfuerzos sobrehumanos para eliminar totalmente nuestros defectos y pecados (¡algo que, en cualquier caso, está fuera de nuestro alcance!), sino de recuperar lo antes posible la paz, evitando la tristeza y el desaliento cuando caigamos en una falta o cuando nos sintamos afectados por la experiencia de nuestras imperfecciones. Esto

«Señor, te pido perdón, he pecado otra vez, ¡mira lo que soy capaz de hacer por mí mismo! Pero me abandono confiadamente en tu misericordia y en tu perdón y te doy gracias por no haberme permitido pecar aún más gravemente. Me abandono en ti con confianza porque sé que, un día, me curarás por fin. Mientras tanto, te pido que la experiencia de mi miseria me haga más humilde, más dulce con los otros, más consciente de que no puedo nada por mí mismo, sino que todo lo tengo que esperar solamente de tu amor y tu misericordia». La respuesta es clara. La

Que esto no disminuya nuestro temor a pecar, ni nuestro dolor por haber pecado. Pero nuestros pecados se han convertido, para nosotros, en una fuente de humildad.» Añadamos

Hemos de saber que una de las armas que el demonio suele emplear para impedir el camino de las almas hacia Dios consiste precisamente en hacerles perder la paz y llegar a desalentarlas a la vista de sus faltas. Necesitamos

La prueba del progreso espiritual no es tanto la de no caer, sino la de ser capaz de levantarse rápidamente de las caídas.     15.

el que acepta dejar todo en manos de Dios, darle el permiso para que dé y tome a su albedrío, encuentra una paz y una libertad interior inexplicables. «¡Ah, si supiéramos lo que se gana renunciando a todas las cosas!», dice Santa Teresa de Lisieux. Ese es el camino de la felicidad: si le dejamos actuar libremente, Dios es infinitamente más capaz de hacernos felices de lo que somos nosotros, pues nos conoce y nos ama más de lo que no- sotros nos conocemos y nos amamos.

No os dejéis abatir o desalentar si os parece que no hacéis nada, que sois cobarde y tibio. Si veis que aún estáis sujeto a afectos naturales, a pensamientos de amor propio y a tristeza, tratad simplemente de olvidar todas esas cosas, y dirigid el alma hacia Dios, presentándoos ante Él con el deseo sosegado y continuo de que haga de vos y en vos lo que le plazca. Intentad únicamente olvidaros de vos y caminad ante Él en medio de vuestra pobreza, sin prestaros atención... Mientras os inquieten esos movimientos de la naturaleza, estaréis ocupado en vos mismo; y mientras os ocupéis de vos mismo no recorreréis mucho trecho en el camino de la perfección.

Los deseos demasiado intensos proceden de la naturaleza; todo lo que procede de la gracia es dulce, humilde, sereno, llena el alma y la hace buena y obediente a Dios.

no inquietarse jamás y no alterarse por nada; olvidar el pasado; vivir como si el futuro no existiera; vivir para Jesús en el momento presente, o más bien, vivir como si no hubiera vida en vos, sino dejando a Jesús vivir a su gusto; caminad así en cualquier circunstancia y en cualquier ocasión, sin temor ni preocupación,

Es preciso tratar los asuntos cuidadosamente, pero sin prisa ni preocupación. No os lancéis a la tarea, pues cualquier clase de precipitación oscurece la razón y el juicio, y nos impide incluso hacer bien la cosa que emprendemos... Cuando

One of the desert fathers said: Obedience responds to obedience. If someone obeys God, God responds to that person’s request.5 Shortly

Así es como se entiende la extraordinaria importancia de la libertad, que proporciona su valor al amor; y el amor constituye la condición para la felicidad

God acts in the peace of one’s soul. It is not by our own efforts that we succeed in liberating ourselves from sin; it is only the grace of God which attains this end. Rather than troubling ourselves, it is more efficacious to regain our peace and let God act.

«el amor es tan poderoso que sabe sacar provecho de todo, del bien y del mal que halla en mí»19

Với con người hiện đại, tự do thường có nghĩa là vứt bỏ mọi ràng buộc và mọi quyền bính -“Không Thiên Chúa, không ông chủ”. Trái lại, với Kitô giáo, tự do chỉ có thể được tìm thấy bằng việc quy phục Thiên Chúa, trong sự “vâng phục của đức tin” như thánh Phaolô nói tới 5. Tự do đích thực không phải là vô số điều này điều kia con người dành được cho chính mình; nó là quà tặng không của Thiên Chúa, một hoa trái của Chúa Thánh Thần, được đón nhận theo mức độ chúng ta đặt mình trong tương quan phụ thuộc đầy yêu thương vào Đấng Tạo Thành và Đấng Cứu Độ chúng ta. Đây là nơi mà sự nghịch lý của Tin Mừng lộ rõ nhất, “Ai cứu mạng sống mình thì sẽ mất, còn ai mất mạng sống mình vì tôi thì sẽ tìm thấy nó” 6. Nói cách khác, người muốn giữ và bảo vệ tự do của mình bất cứ giá nào, sẽ mất nó; nhưng những ai sẵn sàng “đánh mất” nó bằng cách tin tưởng giao phó nó vào tay Thiên Chúa, sẽ giữ được nó. Tự do sẽ được phục hồi cho họ, đẹp đẽ và sâu sắc hơn vô cùng như một quà tặng tuyệt diệu từ sự trìu mến của Thiên Chúa. Quả vậy, tự do của chúng ta tương ứng với tình yêu và niềm tin như con thơ chúng ta dành cho Cha trên trời của mình.

Có một điều gì đó rất tự do khi hiểu được hồng ân của giây phút hiện tại này. Thậm chí cả khi toàn thể quá khứ của chúng ta là một tai ương hoặc tương lai tưởng chừng như một ngõ cụt, thì giờ đây chúng ta vẫn có thể thiết lập một tương giao với Thiên Chúa ngang qua một hành vi đức tin, tín thác và trao phó. Thiên Chúa hiện diện mãi mãi, trẻ trung mãi mãi, mới mẻ mãi mãi; quá khứ và tương lai của chúng ta là của Người. Người có thể tha thứ mọi sự, thanh luyện mọi sự, đổi mới mọi sự. “Người sẽ lấy tình thương mà đổi mới ngươi”. Trong giây phút hiện tại, vì tình yêu vô cùng nhân hậu của Người, chúng ta luôn luôn có thể bắt đầu lại, quá khứ không thể cản trở cũng như tương lai không thể dằn vặt chúng ta. Quá khứ ở trong tay Thiên Chúa Từ Nhân, Đấng có thể làm cho mọi sự sinh ích; tương lai nằm trong bàn tay quan phòng của Người, Đấng không bao giờ quên lãng chúng ta. Đức tin không để chúng ta sống như nhiều người sống, họ để cho quá khứ nặng nề và tương lai đầy sợ hãi đè bẹp. Sống giây phút hiện tại cho phép tâm hồn chúng ta trương rộng.

It is natural and easy to go along with pleasant situations that arise without our choosing them. It becomes a problem, obviously, when things are unpleasant, go against us, or make us suffer. But it is precisely then that, in order to become truly free, we are often called to choose to accept what we did not want, and even what we would not have wanted at any price. There is a paradoxical law of human life here: one cannot become truly free unless one accepts not always being free!

God’s love is infinitely more powerful than anything we can do by our own wisdom or our own strength. Yet one of the most essential conditions for God’s grace to act in our lives is saying yes to what we are and to the situations in which we find ourselves.

The Holy Spirit never acts unless we freely cooperate. We must accept ourselves just as we are, if the Holy Spirit is to change us for the better. Similarly, if we don’t accept others—for example, if we’re angry with them for not being as we want—we do not allow the Holy Spirit to act positively on our relationships or make an opportunity to change.

Let me explain. More often than not, we feel that our freedom is limited by our circumstances: the restrictions imposed on us by society, the obligations of all kinds that other people lay upon us, this or that physical or health limitation, and so on. To find our freedom, we imagine we have to get rid of those restrictions and limitations. When we feel stifled or trapped in some way by circumstances, we resent the institutions or the people that seem to be their cause. How many grievances we have toward everything in life that doesn’t go as we wish, and so prevents us from being as free as we would desire! That way of seeing things contains a degree of truth. Sometimes certain limitations need to be remedied, restrictions overcome, in order to attain freedom. But there is also much here that is mistaken and needs to be unmasked if we are ever to taste true freedom. Even if everything we consider as preventing our freedom disappeared, that would be no guarantee that we would find the full freedom we aspire to. When we push back the boundaries, more boundaries always lie a little farther on. We risk finding ourselves forever dissatisfied. We shall always come up against painful restrictions. We can overcome a certain number, but some are inflexible: physical laws, the limitations of our human condition and of life in society, and plenty more.

Very often we feel restricted in our situation, our family, or our surroundings. But maybe the real problem lies elsewhere: in our hearts. There we are restricted, and that is the root of our lack of freedom. If we loved more, love would give our lives infinite dimensions, and we would no longer feel so hemmed in.

But quite often we may also be suffering from a certain confusion. We blame our surroundings, while the real problem is elsewhere: our lack of freedom stems from a lack of love. We judge ourselves to be the victims of difficult circumstances, when the real problem (and its solution) is within us. Our heart is imprisoned by our selfishness or fears, and it is we who need to change, to learn how to love, letting ourselves be transformed by the Holy Spirit; that is the only way of escaping from our sense of confinement. People who haven’t learned how to love will always feel like victims; they will feel restricted wherever they are. But people who love never feel restricted. This is what little St. Thérèse taught me. She made me understand another important thing as well, but one to be considered later: that our inability to love comes most often from our lack of faith and our lack of hope.

But there will always remain a certain amount of suffering that comes from those around us and that we can neither avoid nor correct. Then we are invited to accept it with hope and forgiveness.

Hard as it is, we need to learn to forgive other people for making us suffer or disappointing us, and even to accept the problems they create for us as graces and blessings. The attitude is neither spontaneous nor natural, but it is the only one by which to achieve peace and interior freedom.

Forgiving means saying: “This person has wronged me, but I don’t want to condemn him; I don’t want to identify him with his fault; I don’t want to take justice into my own hands. God is the only one who ‘searches mind and heart,

Only love, then, can satisfy us; and there is no love without freedom. The kind of love that is the result of constraint, or self-interest, or the mere satisfaction of a need, does not deserve the name love. Love is neither taken nor bought. There is true love, and therefore happiness, only between people who freely yield possession of the self in order to give themselves to one another.

On the material plane, of course, other people can deprive us of many things. But not of what is essential, the only true and lasting good: God’s love for us and the love we can have for him, with the inner growth it produces. Nobody can prevent us from believing in God, hoping in him, and loving him, everywhere and in all circumstances. Faith, hope, and love make human beings fully human. All else is secondary and relative; even if we are deprived of it, that is not an absolute evil. There is within us something indestructible that is guaranteed by God’s faithfulness and love.

No matter what happens, I’ve got nothing to lose. I need to maintain my fervor, continue to love God and pray with all my heart, and love the people I’m living with, even if I don’t know how things will turn out. I won’t be wasting my time, and it’s not wrong to try to love. Love will never be in vain.” St. John of the Cross said, “Where there is no love, put love, and you will harvest love.”56

But external evil only harms us to the degree we react badly to it, by fear, worry, discouragement, sadness, giving up, rushing to apply hasty solutions that don’t solve anything, judging, fostering bitterness and resentment, refusing to forgive, and so on. Jesus says in St. Mark’s Gospel: “There is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him!

Theological hope can only come from a radical experience of our poverty. As long as we are rich, we rely on our riches. To learn hope, we have to pass through impoverishment. These experiences are the prelude to experiencing the goodness, faithfulness, and power of God in a quite extraordinary way. “Blessed are the poor in spirit”—those stripped of everything by the Spirit—“for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”9

St. Thérèse of Lisieux said during her illness: “I only suffer for one moment. It is because people think about the past and the future that they become discouraged and despair.

Aunque no siempre seamos dueños del transcurrir de nuestra vida, sí lo somos del sentido que le damos.

Espíritu Santo: una efusión que llena a la persona de la presencia divina, que une íntimamente con Cristo y cuyo más bello fruto lo constituye la valentía para amar.

«Ahora permanecen la fe, la esperanza y la caridad, estas tres; pero la mayor de ellas es la caridad»13. La fe y la esperanza son provisionales, sólo para este mundo, y enseguida pasarán: en el cielo, la fe será reemplazada por la visión, la esperanza por la posesión; sólo el amor no pasará jamás: nada reemplazará a la caridad porque ésta es el fin.

La falta de esperanza y la falta de confianza en lo que la gracia divina puede obrar en nosotros y en lo que nosotros podemos hacer con su ayuda, trae como inevitable consecuencia un estrechamiento del corazón y una mengua de la caridad. Y, por el contrario, la confianza —como dice Teresa de Lisieux— conduce al amor. El

para que nuestra voluntad sea fuerte y dispuesta, necesita verse alimentada por el deseo. Y ese deseo no puede ser poderoso si lo que se desea no se percibe como posible y accesible; porque, si nos representamos algo como inaccesible, dejamos de desearlo y quererlo con fuerza.

«De Dios obtenemos tanto como esperamos»25