Spiritual Secrets of a Trappist Monk: The Truth of Who You Are and What God Calls You to Be by Raymond Father M

Author:Raymond, Father M. [Raymond, Father M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sophia Institute Press
Published: 2011-11-10T05:00:00+00:00

That soul replied, “Ah, Jesus, I understand now: The greatest act of liberty is to do Thy will.”

Are you ready to make the same reply, and to act upon it? Do not say you are unworthy. God — and everyone else — knows that. Yet, knowing it, He has made the choice. He has called you to liberty; but it is you who must answer the call, for He “will never give you Heaven under compulsion.”

“Those who abide in Christ do not sin.” You can be sinless. You can stand as straight as the sinless Son of God. God wills it. God is watching and waiting to see if in headlong love, you will plunge into Christ Jesus and live.

Cardinal Newman once wrote, “God beholds thee individually, whoever thou art. He calls thee by name. He sees thee, and understands thee, as He made thee. He knows what is in thee, all thy own peculiar feelings and thoughts, thy dispositions and likings, thy strength and thy weakness. He views thee in thy day of rejoicing and thy day of sorrow. He sympathizes in thy hopes and thy temptations. He interests Himself in all thy anxieties and remembrances, all the risings and failings of thy spirit. He has numbered the very hairs of thy head and the cubits of thy stature. He compasses thee round and bears thee in His arms; He takes thee up and sets thee down. He notes thy very countenance, whether smiling or in tears, whether healthful or sickly. He looks tenderly upon thy hands and thy feet; He hears thy voice, the beating of thy heart, and thy very breathing.

“Thou dost not love thyself better than He loves thee. Thou canst not shrink from pain more than He dislikes thy bearing it; and if He puts it on thee, it is as thou wilt put it on thyself, if thou art wise, for a greater good afterward. Thou art not only His creature (though for the very sparrows He has care, and pitied the ‘much cattle’ of Nineveh); thou art man, redeemed and sanctified, His adopted son, favored with a portion of that glory and blessedness which flows from Him everlastingly unto the Only-Begotten. Thou art chosen to be His, even above thy fellows, who dwell in the East and the South. Thou wast one of those for whom Christ offered His last prayer and sealed it with His Precious Blood.”293

Is it not appalling to think that such a one, who lives not only under the eye of God but in His very hands, can sin? Is it not puzzling to think that such a one, a member of Christ’s Mystical Body, can keep from falling deeply in love — with God?

“Many things know we,” said St. Thomas More,294 “that we seldom think on: and in the things of the soul, the knowledge without the remembrance little profiteth. What availeth it to know there is a God, which thou not only believest by faith, but knowest

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