Page:Complete ascetical works of St Alphonsus v6.djvu/381

Rh pied solely with God, and to be able to exclaim with St. Francis, "My God and my all." My God, what are riches, and dignities, and goods of the world, compared with Thee! Thou art my all and my every good. "My God and my all." Thomas à Kempis writes, "Oh, sweet word! It speaks enough for him who under stands it; and to him who loves, it is most delicious to repeat again and again: My God and my all, my God and my all!"

Wherefore, to arrive at perfect union with God, a total detachment from creatures is of absolute necessity. And to come to particulars, we must divest ourselves of all inordinate affection towards relatives. Jesus Christ says: If any man come to Me and hate not his father and mother, and wife and children, and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple. And wherefore this hatred to relatives? because generally, as regards the interests of the soul, we cannot have greater enemies than our own kindred: And a man's enemies shall be those of his own household. St. Charles Borromeo declared that he never went to pay a visit to his family without returning cooled in fervor. And when Father Antony Mendoza was asked why he refused to enter the house of his parents, he replied, "Because I know, by experience, that nowhere is the devotion of religious so dissipated as in the house of parents."

When, moreover, the choice of a state of life is con-