Quote of the day, 3 August: Père Jacques de Jésus

Since God is all-powerful, his will embraces everything that happens in the world and in our lives. His will embraces everything that touches or occupies us, whether it is a threat or a task or an event. His will embraces the grace of prayer, a conversation with our Superior, an accident, a sorrow, a friendship, an antipathy, even our cowardice, our fears, and our sins.

Whatever enriches or diminishes our being absolutely everything, even the least particle is willed and ordained by God either directly or indirectly. God permits our faults indirectly. He lets them be, for they have a place in his plan. Even those enormous faults of ambition and pride that upset the whole world have their place in God’s plan.

God created beauty and we spend our time defiling his work. God follows us and unwearyingly repairs what our hands have foolishly degraded despite its original magnificence. Each second we live prolongs our existence. Each succeeding second is offered to us as a gift from the hand of God, our omnipotent creator.

When we have understood this truth and when we live continuously each day in a real state of authentic abandonment, we have at our disposal a new way of ceaselessly communing with God.

Servant of God Père Jacques de Jésus

Conference 11: Hope and Abandonment
Saturday 11 September 1943
Retreat to the Carmel of Pontoise

Jacques, P 2005, Listen to the silence: a retreat with Père Jacques, translated from the French and edited by Murphy F, ICS Publications, Washington DC.