Our Lord never asks sacrifices from us beyond our strength. At times, it is true this Divine Savior makes us feel all the bitterness of the chalice that He is offering our soul. When He asks the sacrifice of all that is precious in this world, it is impossible, without a very special grace, not to cry out like Him in the garden of agony… It is very consoling to think that Jesus, the Strong God, knew our weaknesses.
–Saint Therese of Lisieux (1873-1897)
You cannot cure the soul of others or ‘help people,’ without having changed yourself. You cannot put in order the spiritual economy of others, so long as there is chaos in your own soul. You cannot bring peace to others if you do not have it yourself. Often, we help other people, not by a series of conscious acts directed upon their soul, but rather by influencing them through our spiritual gifts, without ourselves seeing or knowing how we do so. Once (St.) Anthony the Great asked a visitor who said nothing at all, ‘Why do you not ask me anything?’ and the other answered, ‘It is enough for me to look at you, holy father’.
–Alexander Elchaninov (1881-1934)
Our continual mistake is that we do not concentrate upon the present day, the actual hour, of our life; we live in the past or in the future; we are continually expecting the coming of some special moment when our life will unfold itself in its full significance. And we do not notice that life is flowing like water through our fingers, sifting like precious grain from a loosely fastened bag. Constantly, each day, each hour God is sending us people, circumstances, tasks, which should mark the beginning of our renewal; yet we pay them no attention, and thus continually we resist God’s will for us. Indeed, how can God help us? Only by sending us in our daily life certain people, and certain coincidences of circumstance. If we accepted every hour of our life as the hour of God’s will for us, as the decisive, most important, unique hour of our life – what sources of joy, love, strength, as yet hidden from us, would spring from the depths of our soul!
–Alexander Elchaninov (1881-1934)
We ought to give ourselves up to God in things that are temporal as well as things that are spiritual. We should seek our satisfaction only in fulfilling His will. If He leads us into suffering or if He leads us into comfort, our satisfaction should still only be for the fulfilling of His will, for both suffering and comfort are the same to a soul truly resigned to Him.
–Frank Laubach (1884-1970)
Regard yourselves as ministers and servants, reflecting that you have more need to serve them than they have to be served by you. God could very well provide for them by other means even better than you.
–Saint Angela Merici (1474-1540)
God wishes you to have recourse to Him and to make Him the confidant of all your trouble… Do not withdraw yourself from His hands, however painful His remedies may be. Ask Him not to do your will in what He does, but to do His own.
–Saint John of Avila (1500-1569)
