These Present Days...

 Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade

These present days of agony and martyrdom are in their different way as estimable and as precious. They are days of pure love, since on them you love God for himself and at cost to yourself. You are no longer afraid lest self-love mingle in your relations with him, since there is nothing in these relations but what is torturing to self-love. In this state is the pure will of God that we desire and love, and this with a love so pure that the senses have no share in it. 

How difficult it is to love God purely during delightful days, and yet feel no self-satisfaction or vain complacency! But in times of tribulation and interior deprivation, to be assured of the purity of your love you have only to offer no resistance and to abandon yourself sincerely. How comforting and encouraging this assurance is for whosoever has some small understanding of the value and advantage of pure love. When God has made you understand this, you will understand also why so many of the saints preferred privations and sufferings to delights and consolations, and why they so passionately loved the former that they found it hard to endure the latter. God, it may be, gives you the idea that this painful state will last throughout your life in order that you may make him a fuller sacrifice. Do not consider or hesitate for a single moment; sacrifice everything; abandon yourself limitlessly and unreservedly to him whom you believe to have abandoned you. Maintain this interior attitude unfailingly; it is most essential for you.

(Quoted in Magnificat)