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.
Even the holy men who lived before the coming of Christ understood that God had in mind plans of peace for the human race.
It was the darkness that got you. It was heavy darkness, greasy and compelling. It made walls round you, and shut you in so that you felt like you could not breathe.
Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet.
From meetings and partings none can ever escape. Nor from magic.
Metaphors are our way of losing ourselves in semblances or treading water in a sea of seeming.
It is flat-out strange that something-that anything-is happening at all. There was nothing then a Big Bang, then here we all are. This is extremely weird.
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