Do Not Seek Consolations and Pleasures, but God Alone

Always choose what is burdensome and sorrowful, and do not love the consolations and pleasures that bring no profit to the soul; love to be in submission and dependence on the will of others. Let every act be for you a step in drawing near to God, and no act will be a hindrance on this path. This is what should gladden you. Let God alone be your sweetest consolation, and everything else bitterness. Bring every burden to God. Love Him and surrender your whole heart to Him, without any deliberation or fear. And He will find a way to resolve all your perplexities and will raise you up if you have fallen. In a word, if you love God, you will receive from Him every good. Offer your whole self as a sacrifice to God in the peace and quietness of spirit.

And that you may travel this path more successfully without exhaustion and agitation, sink your will into the will of God; the more fully you sink it in, keeping nothing for yourself, the more strength and consolation you will receive. Let your will be so disposed as to desire only what God desires, and to desire nothing of what God does not desire. At every moment and in every undertaking, renew the intention and resolve of your soul to be pleasing to God in all things. Do not lay plans for the future, for you know not what “the coming day will bring” (Prov. 27:1), but keep yourself unbound and free. Yet this does not forbid everyone from caring with prudent diligence and effort for what is required by his condition and calling, for such care is in accordance with the will of God and does not hinder interior peace in surrender to God, nor any advance in the spirit. In every matter, hold the resolve to do in it all that you can, all that is fitting, and all that is obligatory for you—while being indifferent to everything else that may result outwardly from it, and humbly submitting to whatever follows.

What it is always possible for you to do is to offer your will as a sacrifice to God—desire nothing beyond this. Having therefore always freedom and being bound by nothing on any side, you will always rejoice and be at peace within yourself. In this freedom of spirit consists that great good of which you hear in the writings of the saints. It is nothing other than the firm abiding of the inner person in himself, whereby he does not go out seeking anything outside himself. And all the time you hold yourself in this freedom, you will simultaneously taste that divine and inexpressible joy which is inseparable from the Kingdom of God established within us, as the Lord said: ”For behold, the Kingdom of God is within you” (Luke 17:21).