You ask me, my dear daughters: of what does pure love for God consist? It does not consist in knowing the good, talking about it and desiring it; NOR in feeling great spiritual consolations, because many people have all this and yet are full of love for themselves and empty of love for God; but true and pure love consists in doing everything that one recognizes as being the divine will, and in fulfilling well the vows that have been made and everything that has been promised, each according to his or her state.
Pure love, in the heart which it has taken possession of, cannot bear anything that is not all for itself; and the soul which is vividly touched by this love no longer has any attachment to earthly things.
Those who follow their own natural instincts are very far from this purity of love, for grace and nature – divine love and self-love – cannot subsist together in the same heart; one of them must necessarily perish.
You ask me: how can one acquire distrust of self and trust in God?
I answer you, my daughters, that this can be achieved by frequently practising the appropriate acts, recognizing ourselves as nothing, and getting used to seeing the will of God in everything that happens, for God, in relation to us, does nothing that is not for our good. We must consider as very precious the occasions of humiliation, contradictions and aridity, as well as abandonment and repugnance. These are means that God gives us, out of His immeasurable love, to enrich us and to lead us forward on the paths of perfection, if we make good use of them.
ST. JANE FRANCES DE CHANTAL.
Conference. LXX. In: “Her works”. Madrid:
Testimonio, [n.d], t.II, p.434-435
