Adopt Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade as your spiritual director with these 10 tips for deeper devotion! Continue reading in Abandonment to Divine Providence.
1. Do not overload yourself with vocal prayers beyond those of obligation and apply yourself rather to interior perfection and mental prayer.
2. Take profit, in order to excite yourself to fervor, from the good examples of others and from conversations with spiritual persons, but without showing any disdain for others or abandoning yourself to any feeling of disgust towards them.
3. Do not distress yourself so much at being so frequently at war with your wretched nature; Heaven is worth all these battles. Perhaps they will shortly come to an end and you will achieve a complete victory. After all they will pass, and rest will be eternal. Be at peace and let your humility always be mingled with confidence.
4. Take pains to die to yourself, to renounce natural inclinations, to smother, on all occasions, human hastiness and touchiness. This is the most necessary kind of mortification; it does no harm to the health and it has more power than corporal mortification to increase merit and realize the designs of God, who wishes us to belong solely to Him without reserve.
5. Illnesses and infirmities accepted in complete submission to the Will of God with humble thanksgiving and in union with Jesus Christ are very useful to expiate the past and to weaken the “old man,” in us; they help us to die spiritually to everything before our natural death, which by finishing off our transitory troubles will make us enter (we must hope) into the enjoyment of eternal goods.
6. Our zeal for our own advancement and for that of those committed to our charge should be ardent and active, but never restless, anxious and without confidence.
7. Try with peaceful fidelity to profit by all the various states through which Our Lord may wish you to pass for His glory and your own perfection. Turn all that happens in the direction of divine love and a simple self-abandonment to the paternal guidance of God’s adorable Providence.
8. Endeavor to become more and more interior, aspiring to the full perfection of your holy state by your perfect regularity. Humble yourself ceaselessly before God that He may make you victorious over yourself. You need very great help so that your touchiness and too human and natural fastidiousness of feeling may be completely extinguished in your heart before death, for these defects are born of your character and temperament.
9. As this earthly pilgrimage advances, let us force ourselves to grow in solid fervor according to the perfection of our holy state and the particular designs of God on our souls. When He gives us special tastes in devotion, special sensibilities, let us profit by them to attach ourselves more firmly to Him beyond all His gifts. But in times of dryness, let us always keep the same gait, humbly recalling our indulgence, and considering also that perhaps God wishes to prove the solidity of our love for Him by these salutary trials.
10. Let us be truly humble and occupied in the correction of our faults, and we shall not think much about those of other people. Let us see Jesus Christ in all our neighbors, and we shall not find it hard to excuse them, to endure and cherish them.
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This article is taken from a chapter in Abandonment to Divine Providence by Fr. Jean-Pierre de Caussade which is available from TAN Books.
