Page:MyPrayerBookHappinessInGoodness.djvu/66

 He, who  relies  upon  God,  becomes  by  this  very  reliance as  powerful  and  as  invincible  as  God,  and  created powers can  no  more  prevail  against  him  than  against God Himself. This confidence  in  the  fatherly  providence of  God  can  not,  evidently,  dispense  us  from  doing all that  is  in  our  power  to  accomplish  His  designs;  but, after having  done  all  that  depends  upon  our  efforts,  we will  abandon  ourselves  completely  to  God  for  the  rest.

— Fr. Ramiere, S.J.,  in  Abandonment.

hen we  will  what  God  wills,"  says  St.  Alphonsus,  "it  is  our  own  greatest  good  that  we  will; for God  desires  what  is  for  our  greatest  advantage. Let your  constant  practice  be  to  offer  yourself  to  God, that He  may  do  with  you  what  He  pleases.,,  God  can not be  deceived  and  we  may  rest  assured  that  what  He determines  will  be  best  for  us. Can there  be  a  better prayer than  this:  "Fiat  Voluntas  Tua!" "Thy Will be  done!" "My Lord,  My  God,  and  My  All!"

o be  "in  tune  with  the  Infinite"  means,  in  a  truly Christian sense,  to  live  in  perfect  conformity with the  will  of  God;  it  means,  in  its  perfect  sense,  not only submission  or  resignation  to  the  divine  will,  but thorough self-abandonment,  prompted  by  the  pure  love of God;  it  means  the  cultivation  of  that  peaceable  state — "the  peace  of  expectant  love"  —  which  St.  Francis of Sales  calls  "holy  indifference"  —  "a  word  we  now understand  to  mean,"  as  we  read  in  his  "Life"  by  De Margerie,  "not  the  coldness,  the  torpor  of  a  heart,  that