Untitled - Saints' Books

438 Appendix.
current of a river, and does not make continual efforts
against the movement of the waters, will be driven back.
The same thing happens to us when we cease to strug
gle with the concupiscence of the flesh.
Holy -desires render our efforts easier, and help us to
move forward; but it is
necessary that these desires be
firm and efficacious that is to say, that they be put in
practice as much as possible. They should not resemble
the desires of those that are content with saying, for
example: Oh! if I had no brothers, no nephews,
I would
enter religion; if I had health, I would do this or that
penance; and in the mean time these p.ersons do not
take a step forward in the way of God: on the contrary,
they always commit the same faults, always keeping up
the same attachments and the same animosities, and go
from bad to worse.
It is therefore necessary that we advance in divine
love, but with the resolution to do on our part all that
we can to attain this end. We must, however, entirely
mistrust our own strength, and trust only in God; for as
soon as we trust in ourselves we remain deprived of the
help of grace.
3.
DEVOTION TO THE PASSION OF OUR LORD AND TO THE BLESSED
SACRAMENT.
To advance in perfection the priest must, moreover,
entertain a great devotion to the Passion of Jesus Christ
and to the Blessed Sacrament. When we consider these
two great mysteries of love, in which a God, to make
himself loved, gives his life and makes himself the food
of a worm of the earth, his creature, we cannot live
without being inflamed with love for Jesus Christ.
For the charity of Christ presseth us. 1 He that thinks of
the love of Jesus Christ will feel himself, as it were,
forced to love him. St. Bonaventure call the wounds
1 "
Charkas enim Christi urget nos." 2 Car., v. 14.