When God lives in the soul it ought to abandon itself entirely to His providence… In souls abandoned to God everything is efficacious, everything is a sermon and apostolic. God imparts to their silence, to their repose, to their detachment, to their words, gestures, etc., a certain virtue which, unknown to them, works in the hearts of those around them.
–Jean-Pierre de Caussade (1675-1751)
This becoming one with the Eternal Goodness cannot come to pass but by an absolute renunciation of our self, and all that is ours, natural or spiritual; for in the same measure that a man comes out from himself, in that measure does God enter in with His divine grace, and he who loses his life shall find it.
–Johannes Tauler (c. 1300-1361)
The question arises: But what then does the sanctified heart pray for? I answer that when truly sanctified, it prays for nothing, for whosoever prays asks God to give him some good, or to take some evil from him. But the sanctified heart desires nothing, and contains nothing that it wishes to be freed from. Therefore it is free of all want except that it wants to be like God.
–Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
You cannot all abandon your possessions, but at least you can change your attitude about them. All getting separates you from others; all giving unites to others.
–Saint Francis of Assisi (1181–1226)
Be ready for the Spirit’s filling. This happens only when we have cleansed our souls of falsehood, anger, bitterness, sexual impurity, uncleanness and covetousness. It happens pens only when we have become compassionate, meek and forgiving to one another, only when facetiousness is absent, only when we have made ourselves worthy. Only then does the Spirit come to settle within our hearts, only when nothing is there to prevent it. Then he will not only enter but also fill us.
–Saint John Chrysostom (347-407)
The pursuit of the contemplative life is something for which a great and sustained effort on the part of the powers of the soul is required: an effort to rise from earthly to heavenly things, an effort to keep one’s attention fixed on spiritual things, an effort to pass beyond and above the sphere of things visible to the eyes of flesh. –Saint Gregory the Great (c. 540-604)
