*“If you have a sincere regard for the virtues of obedience and submission, I wish that, should justice or charity demand it, you would forego your pious exercises, which would be a sort of obedience, and that this omission should be supplied by love. I told you on another occasion: the less we live according to our own liking, and the less option we have in our actions, the more goodness and solidity will there be in our devotion. It is right and proper sometimes to leave our Lord in order to oblige others for love of Him.”—Saint Francis de Sales.*
Blessed is the man whom Thou shalt instruct, O Lord, and shalt teach him out of Thy Law. (Ps. XCIII, v. 12.)
All scripture divinely inspired, is profitable to teach, to reprove, to correct, to instruct in justice. (S. P. Timoth., Ep. II, iii, 16.)
1. Spiritual reading is to the soul what food is to the body. Be careful, therefore, to select such books as will furnish your soul with the best nourishment. I would recommend you to become familiar especially with the works of Saint Francis de Sales.
2. When the choice of reading matter is made by the advice of a spiritual director the teaching it contains should be looked upon as coming from the mouth of God.
3. Do not affect those lives of the Saints in which the supernatural and marvellous predominate. The devout imagination becomes inflamed by such reading and is imbued with vain and useless desires: it leads some to aspire to the revelations of Saint Bridget or the raptures of Saint Joseph of Cupertino, others to imitate the mortifications of the Stylites; and thus by losing time in desiring extraordinary graces, they neglect, to their great detriment, ordinary duties and real obligations. Take great care, then, not to allow yourself to be absorbed in those wonderful characteristics of the saints which we should be content to admire; give preference rather to their simple and interior virtues, for these alone are imitable for us.
*“We ought not to wish for extraordinary things, as, for example, that God would take away our heart, as He did with Saint Catherine of Sienna’s, and give us His in return. But we should desire that our poor hearts no longer live save in subjection to the Heart of our loving Saviour, and this will be the best way of imitating Saint Catherine, for we shall thus become meek, humble and charitable.... True holiness consists in love of God, and not in foolish imaginations and dreamings that nourish self-love whilst they undermine obedience and humility. The desire to have ecstacies and visions is a deception. Let us turn rather to the practice of true meekness and submissiveness, of self-renunciation and docility, of ready compliance with the wishes of others. Thus we shall emulate the saints in what is more real and more admirable for us than ecstacies.”—St. Francis de Sales.
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