The Soul, Stripped of Its Own Will, Must Surrender Itself to God

Hope in God, brother, who calls all, saying: ”Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28), and follow this calling voice, expecting at the same time the coming of the Holy Spirit. With eyes closed, cast yourself into the sea of divine providence and good will, and let the mighty waves of God’s will carry you, as a lifeless thing, without any resistance from your own will—so that in this way you may more quickly be brought to the harbor of salvation and Christian perfection. Doing this many times each day, strive as much as possible to withdraw into solitude both inwardly and outwardly, so that with all the powers of the soul you may give yourself to those practices that are especially potent in raising up a strong love for God: such as prayer, the unceasing invocation of the most sweet name of the Lord and Savior, tears shed from love of Him, warm and joyful reverence before Him, and other spiritual works. But let these works be performed without forcing or straining the heart, lest you grow exhausted from the imprudent fatigue of compulsory exercises, grow hardened, and become incapable of receiving the influences of grace. Furnish yourself for this work with the counsel of those experienced in it, and as you pursue it, seek to acquire the habit of dwelling always in contemplation of God’s holiness and His numberless benefactions, and with humility receive the most sweet drops that fall into your soul from His ineffable goodness.

Do not, however, importune God regarding such manifestations of His good will toward you; but stand humbly in your interior place of solitude, waiting for God’s will to be fulfilled in you. And when God grants them to you without your having wearied yourself to obtain them, then you will experience how sweet and fruitful they are. The key by which the mysterious treasuries of the spiritual gifts of knowledge and divine love are opened is humility, self-denial, and surrender of oneself to God at every time and in every undertaking. By this same key the door of ignorance and spiritual coldness is also shut.

Love, as much as you can, to stand in silence with Mary at the feet of Christ the Lord, and attend to what He will speak to your soul. Take care that your enemies—the greatest of whom is yourself—do not hinder this your holy silent standing before the Lord. When you seek God with your mind in order to find rest in Him, do not assign Him places and limits by your weak and narrow imagination. For He is boundless and is everywhere and in all things—or rather, all things are in Him. You will find Him within yourself, in your soul, at every moment you truly seek Him. God Himself desires to be with us, the sons of men, in order to make us worthy of Himself, though He has no need of us.

When you read the divine Scriptures, do not aim merely to read page after page, but with reflection enter into each word; and when certain words cause you to recollect yourself, or produce movements of compunction, or fill your heart with spiritual joy and love—stop upon them. This is God drawing near to you; receive Him humbly with an open heart, since He Himself desires that you partake of Him. If for this reason you happen to leave unfinished what had been appointed for this spiritual exercise (that is, reading), do not be troubled by this. For the aim of all spiritual exercises, including this one, is to be accounted worthy to taste of God; and when that has been given, there is no need to dwell on the means toward it. In like manner, when you are meditating on some divine subject—especially any part of the sufferings of Christ the Lord—stop at that which moves you to compunction, and dwell upon it longer with your attention, so that the holy feeling may be prolonged.

One of the greatest hindrances to preserving interior peace is, my brother, binding yourself as by an immutable law to the rule of reading each day so many kathismata from the Psalter, so many chapters from the Gospels and Apostolic Epistles. Those who adopt this as a rule usually hasten to read everything through, without caring whether the heart is moved to compunction by what is read, or whether any spiritual thoughts and contemplations arise in the mind; and when they do not manage to read it all, they are anxiously troubled and agitated—not because they have been deprived of the spiritual fruits of the reading for the building up of their inner person, but because not everything has been read. Hear what St. Isaac says of this: “If you wish to take delight in psalmody and to grasp the meaning of the words of the Spirit that you pronounce, set aside the quantity and measure of verses, and let your mind sink into studying the words of the Spirit, until your soul, struck with wonder at the divine Economy, is stirred to high understanding of them and thereby is moved to glorification or to soul-profiting sorrow. In slavish labor there is no peace for the mind, and confusion commonly robs one of the taste for meaning and comprehension, and scatters thoughts like a leech drawing life from bodies with their members’ blood” (see Discourse 30, p. 199; see also Discourse 52).

If you truly desire to pass the course of this present life virtuously, have no other aim in this than to find God wherever He is pleased to reveal Himself to you; and when you are accounted worthy of this, cut short every other activity and do not press forward in it—forget everything else and rest in God alone; and when it pleases His Majesty to withdraw from you and to cease manifesting His nearness to you in the present instance, then you may return to your usual spiritual exercises and continue them, keeping before you the same aim—that is, to find your Beloved through them, so that, having found Him, you may again act as I said above—that is, cut short the active exercise so as to rest in Him alone. Mark well what has been said to you, for there are many devout persons who deprive themselves of the saving fruit of peace from their spiritual exercises by prolonging them, supposing they will suffer loss if they do not bring them to completion—being falsely convinced that this is what spiritual perfection consists in. By thus following their own will, they toil and torment themselves greatly, yet do not attain true rest and interior peace, in which God is truly found and at rest.