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.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of perspective in understanding life's challenges, suggesting that what we perceive as setbacks may have a greater purpose.
Jean-Pierre De Caussade's quote reflects on the human tendency to view difficulties and disruptions as negative experiences. He suggests that if we truly understood the role of these challenges in our lives, we would recognize them as integral parts of our spiritual journey rather than mere annoyances. By framing complaints as a form of blasphemy, he urges us to acknowledge the divine will at play in every situation and encourages a deeper appreciation for our experiences.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience during tough times.
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.
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.
God instructs the heart, not by ideas but by pains and contradictions.
To become a spectator of one's own life is to escape the suffering of life.
It is not the cause for which men took up arms that makes a victory more just or less, it is the order that is established when arms have been laid down.
I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.
Fundamentally the marksman aims at himself.
There is nothing to save, now all is lost, but a tiny core of stillness in the heart like the eye of a violet.
Then I grew up, and the beauty of succulent illusions fell away from me.
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