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.
Interpretation
Holiness is achievable through fidelity to God's plan, regardless of difficulties faced.
In this quote, Jean-Pierre De Caussade emphasizes that the challenges we encounter on our spiritual journey may seem overwhelming, but they often stem from our perspective. True holiness is not about avoiding difficulties but about remaining faithful to God's guidance, which is accessible to everyone, no matter their circumstances.
In practice
This quote can be used during a religious seminar to inspire attendees to view their challenges differently.
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.
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.
Dhikr (remembrance of Allah) is to the heart as water is to a fish; see what happens to a fish when it is taken out of water
The life most of us live are lives we are forced to live by immediate needs, influences, and pressures.
If we truly worship God, acknowledging and adoring his infinite worth, we find ourselves impelled to make him known to others, in order that they may worship him too. Thus worship leads to witness, and witness in its turn to worship, in a perpetual circle.
It is of itself that the divine thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of things), and its thinking is a thinking on thinking.
Faith and Reason are like two wings of the human spirit by which is soars to the truth.
The ugly heart of the South still beats with this idea that one group of people is worth less.
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