One of my favorite spiritual authors is Father Jacques Philippe, a member of the Community of the Beatitudes in France. The members of the Community are from all states of life–married and non-married laity, priests, religious, consecrated virgins–and are actively engaged in the service of the poor and proclamation of the Gospel while living a contemplative vocation based on Carmelite spirituality.
I have been blessed to have been on a retreat with Fr Jacques as retreat master, and I can attest to the profound wisdom he shares clearly and simply about growing in your interior life of prayer and meditation.
Today I want to share a very short excerpt from one of his books that I find myself returning to meditate upon, particularly whenever I try to make the journey to strive for holiness far too complicated, and find myself fighting the wrong way! LOL
Enjoy, and hope to see you on the Way tomorrow.
“However great our efforts, we cannot change ourselves.
Only God can get to the bottom of our defects, and our limitations in the field of love; only he has sufficient mastery over our hearts for that. If we realize that we will save ourselves a great deal of discouragement and fruitless struggle.
We do not have to become saints by our own power; we have to learn how to let God make us into saints.
That does not mean, of course, that we don’t have to make any effort . . .
We should fight, not to attain holiness as a result of our own efforts, but to let God act in us without our putting up any resistance against him; we should fight to open ourselves as fully as possible to his grace, which sanctifies us.”
— Fr. Jacques Philippe, p. 14-15 In the School of the Holy Spirit
