The books the Holy Spirit is writing are living, and every soul a volume in which the divine author makes a true revelation of his word, explaining it to every heart, unfolding it in every moment.
Interpretation
This quote conveys the idea that each person's life is a unique expression of divine communication and revelation.
Jean-Pierre De Caussade suggests that the teachings and experiences of life, as influenced by the Holy Spirit, are like living books that reveal divine truths to each individual. Each soul contributes to this ongoing narrative, where personal experiences and moments illuminate understanding and connection with the divine.
In practice
In a sermon about personal growth, one might say, 'As Jean-Pierre De Caussade reminds us, our lives are like books that the Holy Spirit is writing, revealing truth through our experiences.'
There is not a moment in which God does not present Himself under the cover of some pain to be endured, of some consolation to be enjoyed, or of some duty to be performed. All that takes place within us, around us, or through us, contains and conceals His divine action.
If the work of our sanctification presents us with difficulties that appear insurmountable, it is because we do not look at it in the right way. In reality, holiness consists in one thing alone, namely, fidelity to God's plan. And this fidelity is equally within everyone's capacity in both its active and passive exercise.
There is no peace more wonderful than the peace we enjoy when faith shows us God in all created things.
Souls who can recognize God in the most trivial, the most grievous and the most mortifying things that happen to them in their lives, honor everything equally with delight and rejoicing, and welcome with open arms what others dread and avoid.
You would be very ashamed if you knew what the experiences you call setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbances, and tedious annoyances really are. You would realize that your complaints about them are nothing more nor less than blasphemies - though that never occurs to you. Nothing happens to you except by the will of God, and yet [God's] beloved children curse it because they do not know it for what it is.
God instructs the heart, not by ideas but by pains and contradictions.
The generation of mankind is like the generation of leaves. The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the living tree burgeons with leaves again in the spring.
In Chinese, the word for heart and mind is the same -- Hsin. For when the heart is open and the mind is clear they are of one substance, of one essence.
No one shall expel us from the paradise that Cantor has created for us.
Human beings are too important to be treated as mere symptoms of the past. They have a value which is independent of any temporal process──which is eternal, and must be felt for its own sake.
The subway in New York is a great social experiment; there are so many races and ways of life sitting together on each car.
Our biggest threat is not an asteroid about to crash into us, something we can do nothing about. Instead, all the major threats facing us today are problems entirely of our own making. And since we made the problems, we can also solve the problems.
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