Notes for this theme
Reading comfort
GRM 24.7
O holy friendship with God, beatitude of His faithful ones, wealth unequalled by anything else, he who possesses you is never alone, and never tastes the bitterness of despair. O holy friendship, you do not eradicate sorrow, because sorrow was the destiny of a God incarnate and can thus be the destiny of man. But you make this sorrow sweet in its bitterness, and you mix it with a light and a caress which relieve the cross with a celestial touch.
GRM 24.9
‘I am not worthy, but if You forgive me and come to me, my soul will be healed, and I no longer want to commit sin, because I no longer wish to be ill and hateful to You’.
GRM 25.8
Regard it as something precious, more precious than your own life. Because it is the greatest gift that God can grant a believer in His Son.
GRM 26.5
Jesus is coming to us, poor people, to make us rich in God.
GRM 27.5
(...) I wish to draw the attention of wives to one point. Too many marriages break up through the fault of women, who do not possess that love, which is everything: kindness, pity and solace to their husbands. The physical suffering that lies heavy on women does not lie heavily on men. But all the moral worries do: necessities of work, decisions to be taken, responsibilities before the established authorities and one’s own family… oh! how many things weigh on man! And how much comfort he also needs! And yet, a woman’s selfishness is such that she adds the weight of useless and sometimes unfair complaints to the burden of her tired, disheartened, worried husband. And all this because she is selfish. She does not love.
Love is not the satisfaction of one’s senses and utility. To love is to satisfy him whom we love, beyond senses and utility, giving him the help he needs so that he may always be able to keep his wings open in the skies of hope and peace.
GRM 27.7
No event can happen unless God allows it. Are you powerful? You became so, because God permitted it. Are you a subject? You are such, because God permitted it. Endeavour, therefore, powerful one, not to turn your power to your own detriment. It would always be ‘your detriment’, even if at the beginning, it may appear detrimental to others. Because if God allows, He does not over-allow, and if you go beyond the mark He will strike you and crush you. Endeavour, therefore, o subject, to make of your condition a magnet that will draw the protection of Heaven upon you. And never curse anyone. Leave that to God’s care. It is for Him, the Lord of all, to bless and curse His creatures.
GRM 27.7
(...) Never curse anyone. Leave that to God’s care. It is for Him, the Lord of all, to bless and curse His creatures.
GRM 29.6
You know by now. It is by means of pain that we achieve peace and every grace for ourselves and our neighbours.
GRM 29.9
A mother never renounces her creature unless she is forced to. Whether her heart is asked to renounce her creature by her country or by the love of a spouse or even by God Himself, she will resent and struggle against the separation. It is natural. A son grows in our womb and the tie that links him to us can never be completely broken. Even if the umbilical cord is cut, there is a nerve that always remains: it departs from the mother’s heart and is grafted into the son’s heart: it is a spiritual nerve, more lively and sensitive than a physical one. And a mother feels it stretching even to exceedingly severe pangs if the love of God or of a creature or the need of the country take her son away from her. And it breaks, tearing her heart, if death snatches her son from her.
GRM 29.10-11
29.10 I defeated gluttony, both of knowledge and of enjoyment, by agreeing to know only what God wanted Me to know, without asking Myself or Him more than what I was told. I believed unquestioningly. I overcame the innate personal delight of enjoyment because I denied Myself every sensual pleasure. I confined flesh, the instrument of Satan, together with Satan, under My heel and made of them a step to rise towards Heaven. Heaven! My aim. Where God was. My only hunger. A hunger which is not gluttony, but a necessity blessed by God, Who wants us to crave for Him.
29.11 I defeated lust, which is gluttony carried to the extreme of greed. Because every unrestrained vice leads to a bigger vice. And Eve’s gluttony, which was already blameworthy, led her to lust. It was no longer enough for her to enjoy pleasure by herself. She wanted to take her crime to a refined intensity and thus she became acquainted with lust and was a mistress of lust for her companion. I reversed the terms and instead of descending I have always ascended. Instead of causing other people to descend, I have always attracted them towards Heaven: of My honest companion, I made an angel.
Now that I possessed God and His infinite wealth with Him, I hastened to denude Myself of it saying: ‘Here I am: may Your will be done for Him and by Him’. He is chaste who not only chastises his flesh but also his affections and his thoughts. I had to be the Chaste One in order to annul the One who had been Unchaste in her flesh, her heart and her mind. And I never abandoned My reservedness, not even by saying of My Son: ‘He is Mine, I want Him’, since He belonged only to Me on earth, as He belonged only to God in Heaven.