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.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes finding divine presence in all aspects of life, both positive and negative.
Jean-Pierre De Caussade's quote highlights the ability of certain individuals to perceive the sacred in both the mundane and the challenging experiences of life. These souls have a unique capacity to embrace every circumstance with joy and acceptance, transforming adversity into an opportunity for growth and recognizing the value in everything around them, where many might shrink away in fear or avoidance.
In practice
In a speech about resilience, one could use this quote to illustrate finding positivity in tough situations.
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.
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.
There is no peace more wonderful than the peace we enjoy when faith shows us God in all created things.
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.
If you look at life as a whole, we have to admit life's good where we live. But in an evil Twilight Zone kind of way there's nothing else to choose. In the old days there was always a Bohemia or a creative under-world to join if the mainstream life wasn't your bag - or a life of crime, or even religion.And now there's only the system. All other options have evaporated. For most people it's the System or what... death? There's nothing. There's no way out now.
Conventions are unstated agreements within a community to abide by a single way of doing things - not because there is any inherent advantage to the choice, but because there is an advantage to everyone making the same choice.
One never reaches home, but wherever friendly paths intersect the whole world looks like home for a time.
Multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.
Sometimes when I think of life, I feel like a piece of driftwood washed up on shore.
The ministry of mercy, then, is the best advertising a church can have. It convinces a community that this church provides people with actions for their problems, not only talk. It shows the community that this church is compassionate.
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