Of the discretion to be used in the love of our neighbor, that it may not prejudice this peace

CHAPTER VI

Of the discretion to be used in the love of our neighbor, that it may not prejudice this peace.

Experience will inform you that this is the ready way to eternity, for immediately charity – and that is the love of God and of your neighbor – will pour itself into your soul. Christ assures us, he came to send fire into the world, and desires no other but that it burn (Luke xii 49). But though the love of God hath no limit, yet that towards our neighbor hath a limit, and must not exceed its bounds, lest to edify others we destroy ourselves. Never do any action merely for example’s sake, for instead of uncertain gain to them, you will bring undoubted loss upon yourself. Do all things with simplicity and purity, with no other design than to render yourself acceptable to God. Humble yourself in all your works, and you shall come to understand how little you can profit anyone by them of yourself. Consider that zeal for souls cannot justify or recompense the loss of your own peace. Have a longing desire that all may comprehend this truth which you have attained, and inebriate themselves with this precious wine which God so freely promises to all gratis. This thirst for your neighbor’s good is commendable indeed, since you have received it from the hand of our Lord, not acquired it by your own solicitude or indiscreet zeal. God must plant it in your heart and reap it when he pleases. Do not you presume to till or sow, but keep the field of your soul free and well weeded, and let God sow it in his good season. He desires to find your soul stripped and disengaged, that he may engage, unite, and firmly bind it to himself. Let him make choice of you for his workman; sit down and with a holy idleness and disengaged mind, expect till he hire you. Abandon all solicitude, and steer your course alone and unencumbered, that God may clothe you with himself, who will give you what it cannot enter into your thought to desire, if forgetting yourself your soul live only to his love. Thus it will come to pass that with all diligence, or, to speak more properly, without any diligence at all on your part, which may in the least discompose your quiet, you will be able to calm and pacify all your transports and fervors with much moderation, God preserving in you all peace and tranquility. Thus, to be silent is to pierce heaven with your cries; thus, to be idle is the happiest and most gainful of businesses, uniting the soul with God, and disuniting it from all other objects. And this must pass without your thinking that you on your part do anything excepting through his grace, where God must do all; who desires nothing from you in this silent pasture but that you humble yourself before him and offer him a heart disengaged from all terrestrial propensities, with longing desire that the divine will may be perfectly accomplished in you.