In our approach to God, we must carry with us ourselves and all our works, as a perpetual sacrifice to God; and in the Presence of God, we must forsake ourselves and all our works, and, dying in love, go forth from all creatureliness into the superessential richness of God: there we shall possess God in an eternal death to ourselves.
–Blessed John Ruysbroeck (1293-1381)
And because they have abandoned themselves to God in doing, in leaving undone, and in suffering, they have steadfast peace and inward joy, consolation and savor, of which the world cannot partake; neither any dissembler, nor the man who seeks and means himself more than the glory of God.
–Blessed John Ruysbroeck (1293-1381)
But when we transcend ourselves, and become in our ascent towards God, so simple that the naked love in the height can lay hold of us, where love enfolds love, above every exercise of virtue that is, in our Origin, of Which we are spiritually born, then we cease, and we and all our selfhood die in God. And in this death we become hidden sons of God, and find a new life within us: and that is eternal life.
–Blessed John Ruysbroeck (1293-1381)
If there be anything that is capable of setting the soul in a large place it is absolute abandonment to God. It diffuses in the soul a peace that flows like a river and the righteousness which is as the waves of the sea.
— François Fénèlon (1651-1715)
If we look carefully within ourselves, we shall find that there are certain limits beyond which we refuse to go in offering ourselves to [God]. We hover around these reservations, making believe not to see them, for fear of self-reproach… The more we shrink from giving up any such reserved point, the more certain it is that it needs to be given up. If we were not fast bound by it, we should not make so many efforts to persuade ourselves that we are free.
–François Fénelon (1651-1715)
Perfect love of God means the complete union of our will with God’s.
–Saint Alphonsus Liguori (1696-1787)
