There is not a moment in which God does not present Himself under the cover of some pain to be endured, of some consolation to be enjoyed, or of some duty to be performed. All that takes place within us, around us, or through us, contains and conceals His divine action.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that God's presence is constant, often revealed through pain, comfort, and responsibility.
Jean-Pierre De Caussade expresses the idea that divine influence is always at work in our lives, whether we experience suffering, find solace, or undertake our responsibilities. It highlights the notion that every event we encounter, whether internal or external, embodies a deeper spiritual significance, urging us to recognize and appreciate the divine in our everyday experiences.
In practice
During a meditation session, this quote can encourage participants to reflect on the presence of divinity in their struggles.
If the work of our sanctification presents us with difficulties that appear insurmountable, it is because we do not look at it in the right way. In reality, holiness consists in one thing alone, namely, fidelity to God's plan. And this fidelity is equally within everyone's capacity in both its active and passive exercise.
The books the Holy Spirit is writing are living, and every soul a volume in which the divine author makes a true revelation of his word, explaining it to every heart, unfolding it in every moment.
There is no peace more wonderful than the peace we enjoy when faith shows us God in all created things.
Souls who can recognize God in the most trivial, the most grievous and the most mortifying things that happen to them in their lives, honor everything equally with delight and rejoicing, and welcome with open arms what others dread and avoid.
You would be very ashamed if you knew what the experiences you call setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbances, and tedious annoyances really are. You would realize that your complaints about them are nothing more nor less than blasphemies - though that never occurs to you. Nothing happens to you except by the will of God, and yet [God's] beloved children curse it because they do not know it for what it is.
God instructs the heart, not by ideas but by pains and contradictions.
Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe.
The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed.
Who made the world I cannot tell; 'Tis made, and here am I in hell. My hand, though now my knuckles bleed, I never soiled with such a deed.
The new American finds his challenge and his love in the traffic-choked streets, skies nested in smog, choking with the acids of industry, the screech of rubber and houses leashed in against one another while the town lets wither a time and die.
There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.
The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. Each of us carries his own life-form- an indeterminable form which cannot be superseded by any other.
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