June 25th
St Chantal on Prayer
Abandonment and Trust

Make no effort to work your way out, nor to overcome your trial, temptations, difficulties, sorrows, periods of darkness, anxieties, frustrations, wild thoughts, nor anything of the like, no matter what they may be or how they may be going on in your heart, no matter how painful a martyrdom they may bring.  Never be startled nor frightened at such things, nor make any reflection upon them other than this, which is to take them only as grievous temptations.  Hold yourself far above them, pretending that they simply are not there, even though you feel them all so keenly.  Hide your distress from your very self, and say nothing about it neither to God nor to yourself.  Do not examine it even for so long as to imagine how you might find words to tell someone else what it is, and never make it the subject of an examen.  Hold your eyes on God and leave the doing to Him.  That is all the doing you  have to worry about, and the only activity which God asks of you and towards which it is He alone who is drawing you.