St. Vincent de Paul

Charity – Sixth Day of November

Charity.

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart. This is the greatest and the first commandment,
and the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.”
— St. Matt. 22:38

SIXTH DAY. 

He who has arrived at a perfect love of God feels neither glory nor disgrace; he has only contempt for temptations and sufferings, He loses taste for everything but God. Finding no strength, no consolation, no repose in anything but God, he seeks only his Beloved. Whether he works or eats, whether he sleeps or wakes, whether he converses or is silent, all his thought, all his ambition is to find Him Whom he loves. God is his treasure, in Him is his heart. In a word, he may be compared to a man violently enamored, who can only live near the creature who is the object of his passion. — St. John Chrysostom.

Where are you going, whom do you seek? Asked someone of a holy religious. “I am going to God; it is God Whom I seek,” replied he, “and I will not stop until I have found Him.”

The blessed Raymond Lullus was asked these questions: “To whom do you belong? From whence do you come? Where do you go? Who brought you here?” He replied: “I belong to Love, I come from Love, I am going to Love, it is Love which has conducted me here.”

St. Vincent Ferrer’s heart and mind were always full of God; he thought always of God, he spoke always of God or to God; in walking or sitting, studying or conversing, it was easily seen that he was with God, that he united himself closely to Him.

The ardor of divine love produced in St. Louis of Gonzaga, St. Catharine of Siena, St. Peter of Alcantara, St. Teresa, St. Philip Neri, St. Magdalene of Pazzi, St. Francis of Paula, and many others, works so wonderful that thy would seem incredible if we were to relate them.

An ambassador of St. Louis, King of France, me a woman in Ptolemaide walking through the streets of the city carrying in her right hand a pitcher of water, in her left a lighted torch, who was crying, “O God, O God, is it possible?” The ambassador stopped her and asked what she meant by this. “I would, if it were the pleasure of God,” she said, “extinguish hell with this water and burn paradise with this torch, so that God might be loved purely for Himself.”

A religious was accustomed to say, when asked the time of day, “It is the time to love God.”

Prayer.

Lord, I would sigh only for Thee. Grant that I may see but Thee, that I may feel but Thee, taste but Thee, think but of Thee, speak and work but for Thee. Thou art my treasure, let my heart repose only in Thee.

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