[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Wednesday, April 30, 2014

[Paul]

Hello and greetings from a very rainy Baltimore, and I'm sure the same can be said for other places in the mid-Atlantic and southern states in our country.  Hope that you are all doing well, despite the inclement weather.  We know that things will get back to normal, hopefully sooner than we had expected.  As for the rest of you, I hope that your day is going well.

Today we will complete our look at the spiritual maxims of Brother Lawrence with today's discourse entitled "The Benefits of the Presence of God," rendered as follows:

1.  The first benefit which the soul receives from the presence of God is that faith becomes more alive and active on every side of life, particularly in times of need, since it obtains for us grace in temptation and in our dealings with one another.  For the soul, accustomed by this practice to rely on faith, seeing and feeling God present, is able to call upon Him freely and with confidence, and to obtain that of which she is in need.  One may say that faith enables the soul to approach the state of the Blessed; the more she advances the more living does faith become, and at last it becomes so quickened that the soul can almost say:  "I no longer believe, for I can see the experience.

2.  The practice of the presence of God strengthens us in hope.  Our hope grows in proportion as our knowledge, and as our faith is enabled by this holy practice to penetrate the mysteries of God, in that measure it finds in Him a beauty which infinitely surpasses not only that of the bodies which we behold on earth, but also that of perfected souls and of the angels.  Our hope then increases and strengthens, encouraged and sustained by the magnitude of the good which it desires to enjoy, and which, in some sort, it already savours.

3.  Hope imbues the will with a contempt for the world and inflames it with the fire of divine love.  God's love is a consuming fire which burns to ashes whatever is contrary to it, and the soul thus kindled can live only in the presence of God, that presence which inspires within the heart a holy ardour, a sanctified eagerness, a veritable passion to see God loved, known, served and worshipped by all His creatures.

4.  By this practice the soul comes to such a knowledge of God that almost all her life is passed in making acts of love and of worship, of contrition and of trust, of thanks, of offering, of petition, and of all virtues; sometimes, indeed, she seems engaged in one unceasing, endless act, for the soul is keeping herself continually in the divine presence.

I know that only a few persons attain this state; it is a grace which God bestows on certain chosen souls, for this "simple regard" is an unconvenanted gift.  But for the encouragement of those who wish to undertake this holy practice, I must say that He ordinarily gives it to those who are properly disposed; and if He does not give it, one can, with the assistance of ordinary grace and by the practice of the presence of God, acquire at least a way and state of prayer which approaches very nearly to that of "simple regard."

And with this discourse, we conclude our look back to a simpler time in history, the mid 17th century.  Tomorrow we will enter into a new topic.  After all it will be the month of May, although for some of my readers it's already May 1 as this is being written.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul