Page:MyPrayerBookHappinessInGoodness.djvu/68

This page needs to be proofread.

ness of self is the most perfect penance we can perform, for all conversion consists only in truly renouncing and forgetting ourselves, to be occupied with God and filled with Him. This forgetfulness of , self is the martyrdom of self-love; it is its death, and an annihilation which leaves it without resources; then the heart dilates and is enlarged. We are relieved by casting from us the dangerous weight of self which formerly overwhelmed us. We look upon God as a good Father who leads us, as it were, by the hand in the present moment; and all our rest is in humble and firm confidence in His fatherly goodness.

"If anything is capable of making a heart free and unrestrained, it is perfect abandonment to God and His holy will; this abandonment fills the heart with a divine peace more abundant than the fullest floods. If anything can render a mind serene, dissipate the keenest anxieties, soften the bitterest pains, it is assuredly this perfect simplicity and liberty of a heart wholly abandoned to the hands of God. "

EJACULATION

May the most just, most high, and most amiable will of God be done in all things, be praised and magnified forever.

100 days' indulgence once a day. — Pius VII, May 19, 1818.

11. — The Saved and Lost

A certain man said to our blessed Saviour, as we read in the Gospel of St. Luke (xiii. 23): "Lord,