From Spiritual Progress, by François Fénelon
We may judge our advancement in humility by the delight we have in humiliations.
Let us turn our hearts toward God in a simple, familiar spirit, full of confidence in him.
I have no doubt but that God constantly treats you as one of his friends, that is, with crosses, sufferings, and humiliations.
This continual death is a blessed life known to few. A single word, uttered from this rest, will do more, even in outward affairs, than all our most eager and officious care.
Nothing will make us so tender to others’ faults as a view of our own.
Abandon yourself as absolutely as possible to God, and continue to do so to your latest breath, and He will never desert you.
Be content to do quietly and gently what it becomes you to do, and let everything else be to you as though it were not.
We must often raise our hearts to God. He will purify, enlighten, and direct them.
What a mercy is humiliation to a soul that receives it with steadfast faith!
In short, let us be accustomed to recollect ourselves during the day and in the midst of our occupations, by a simple view of God.
The true agent is a perfect abandonment before God, in which we do everything by the light which He gives, and are content with the success which He bestows.
The ways and means of God to draw souls to Himself, accomplish his design much more rapidly and effectually than all the efforts of the creature; for they destroy self-love at its very root, where, with all our pains, we could scarce discover it.
True humility consists in a deep view of our unworthiness and absolute abandonment to God.
I do not ask from you a love tender and emotional, but only that your will should lean towards love, and that, notwithstanding all the corrupt desires of your heart, you should prefer God before self and the whole world.
A little reading and recollection every day, will be the means of insensibly giving you light and strength for all the sacrifices God will require of you.
The peace of the soul consists in an absolute resignation to the will of God.
From the moment that you cease to desire anything according to your own judgment, and begin to will everything just as God wills it, you will be free from your former tormenting reflections.
Love Him more than yourself, and his glory more than your life.
The important question is not how much you enjoy religion, but whether you will whatever God wills.
Love Him, and I will acquit you of everything else; for everything else will come by love.
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