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The Fifty-Third Chapter
GOD'S GRACE IS NOT GIVEN TO THE EARTHLY MINDED
THE VOICE OF CHRIST
MY CHILD, my grace is precious. It does not allow itself to be mixed with
external things or with earthly consolations. Cast away all obstacles to grace,
therefore, if you wish to receive its infusion.
Seek to retire within yourself. Love to dwell alone with yourself. Seek no man's
conversation, but rather pour forth devout prayer to God that you may keep your
mind contrite and your heart pure.
Consider the whole world as nothing. Prefer attendance upon God to all outward
occupation, for you cannot attend upon Me and at the same time take delight in
external things. You must remove yourself from acquaintances and from dear
friends, and keep your mind free of all temporal consolation. Thus the blessed
Apostle St. Peter begs the faithful of Christ to keep themselves as strangers
and pilgrims in the world.[39]
What great confidence at the hour of death shall be his who is not attached to
this world by any affection. But the sickly soul does not know what it is to
have a heart thus separated from all things, nor does the natural man know the
liberty of the spiritual man. Yet, if he truly wishes to be spiritual, he must
renounce both strangers and friends, and must beware of no one more than
himself.
If you completely conquer yourself, you will more easily subdue all other
things. The perfect victory is to triumph over self. For he who holds himself in
such subjection that sensuality obeys reason and reason obeys Me in all matters,
is truly his own conqueror and master of the world.
Now, if you wish to climb to this high position you must begin like a man, and
lay the ax to the root, in order to tear out and destroy any hidden unruly love
of self or of earthly goods. From this vice of too much self-love comes almost
every other vice that must be uprooted. And when this evil is vanquished, and
brought under control, great peace and quiet will follow at once.
But because few labor to die entirely to self, or tend completely away from
self, therefore they remain entangled in self, and cannot be lifted in spirit
above themselves. But he who desires to walk freely with Me must mortify all his
low and inordinate affections, and must not cling with selfish love or desire to
any creature.
