Where to find Courage, Joy, and Inspiration (Thursday’s Meditation)

Meditation for the Morning

Let us adore God teaching us by the mouth of St. Paul that the whole of religion consists in love, and that love is the secret of doing all things well (Rom. 13:10). Let us thank Him for so kind and precious a lesson.

FIRST POINT

Love Inspires us with the Desire and the Will to do all Things Well

The more we love, the more we have it at heart to please God, whom we love. The one is the necessary effect of the other, and the exact measure of it. If we really love God, we will aspire after nothing else from morning to night except to please Him that is to say, to do all things well, since it is only thereby that we can please Him. The soul which does not love except in a half-hearted kind of way is inspired with nothing more than a miserably weak inclination to perform its actions well, and therefore does nothing well; it drags itself painfully along in the service of God, falls and rises again, makes a false step and falls once more, makes resolutions and executes none of them. But the soul which loves derives from its love a great desire to do all things most perfectly, in order to please all the more the God whom it loves, and this desire, dilating the heart, makes it turn in the way of the commandments and of the perfect life. In proportion as it acts, this desire increases; practice increases it, even as wood cast upon the fire augments the flame, and there results from it a continually more ardent desire to do everything in the best possible manner, in order to please the God whom we love always more and more.

SECOND POINT

Love Gives Courage to do all Things Well

Nothing costs us aught when we love, says St. Augustine; or, if it does give us any trouble, it makes us love even the trouble. Nothing is stronger than love, says the author of the Imitation. He who loves springs across all difficulties, flies, and triumphs (Imit. 5:3,4). Fatigue does not exhaust him, or discomfort stop him, or fear disconcert him. In vain nature shudders at the severity of the morals of the Gospel; he treads nature under foot and passes on. In vain the world attempts to hinder him by its sarcasm and its railings, or to attract him by the temptation of its honors and its pleasures; he treads the world under foot and passes on. In vain self-will, with its inconstancies and its caprices; temper, with its outbursts and its impatience; idleness, with its distastes, all seem to conspire together to hinder him from doing well; he treads all underfoot and passes on. Let us here examine our conscience; if we do not possess this great courage, it is because we do not love; let us love God with our whole heart, and nothing will be difficult to us.

THIRD POINT

Love Makes us Find Joy and Merit in the Good we do

The happiness of pleasing God by doing all things well is a foretaste of paradise. All for Thy love, all to please Thee, the soul which loves God says to Him; and it is content it triumphs. All for Thy love, all in order to please Thee, it repeats to itself on performing its next action, and its joy is redoubled, its happiness multiplied. If it meets with crosses on its path and where are they not to be found? With love, all its troubles are softened; its crosses lose their severity, its thorns their points.(Imit. 5:3) We see in the cross a present sent us by God, who does not afflict us excepting because He loves us, and who sees in this cross a means of salvation for us; from that time we bless it, and we kiss His hand, which is always good, even when it strikes us. Then to the joy of doing well love adds merit, for the motive of love marvelously raises the merit of our actions; and in heaven there will be an immense difference between actions performed through love and those which will have had faith or hope as their motive. Oh, how good it is, then, to do everything from love! Is it thus that we act?

Resolutions and spiritual nosegay as above.