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)
God gave Himself to you: give yourself to God.
— Blessed Robert Southwell (1561-1595)
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)
You propose to give up everything to God; be sure, then, to include yourself among the things to be given up.
— Saint Benedict (480-547)
Weakness is not the kind of weakness which we show by sinning and forgetting God, but the kind of weakness which means being completely supple, completely transparent, completely abandoned in the hands of God… You could think of that [weakness] also in terms of a sail. A sail can catch the wind and be used to maneuver a boat only because it is so frail. If instead of a sail you put a solid board, it would not work; it is the weakness of the sail that makes it sensitive to the wind.
— Anthony Bloom (1914-2003)
