June 23rd
St Chantal on Prayer
In His Good Pleasure

In the same way, your love of God, your faith, your hope are all the greater in that they are cut off from every sensible satisfaction and comfort.  All this pleasant and sensible side of your spirituality is now buried in God as in a divine furnace, so that, the more all is lost to your feelings, the greater and more precious is the fragrance before God, by reason of your humble acceptance of His will which makes you thus die to your very self, so that there is nothing you can say except:  "It is finished!  My God, I have confided my entire being to Your hands, so that You may do as You wish with me, according to Your good pleasure.  I leave to You the care of my interior state.  Watch over it as it may please You.  All I wish to take responsibility for is my faithfulness to holy patience, and to the task of maintaining my mind in that utterly sole and simple gaze upon You, with  no concern for anything else whatever."

It is thus that You must put to death in yourself every source of reflection or activity, remaining there in God's presence as it may please Him, patient and enduring, faithful to your role, holding to your spiritual exercises, and following the lead of what is good or best, cost what it may, with the support of divine grace.