Eu cito

Joyce woke me up to the infinity of meaning within the limitations of the ordinary person in the ordinary day. Leopold Bloom buying and selling, talking and listening, eating and defecating, praying and blaspheming is mythic in the grand manner. The twenty-year-long voyage from Troy to Ithaca is repeated every twenty-four hours in anyone's life if we only have eyes and ears for it.

We must drink from the spring to quench our thirst; sipping only makes us more thirsty. Similarly, if we wish to think, write and live like prophets, the apostles and the saints, we must abandon ourselves, like them, to God's purpose for us. O mystery of love! We imagine that miracles are over, and that all we can do now is to copy your works of old and repeat your ancient words! We do not see that your continuing operation is an everlasting source of fresh ideas, fresh suffering and action, of new prophets, patriarchs, apostles and saints who have no need to follow in each other's footsteps, but live in a continuing abandonment to your secret intentions. (...) We long for the opportunity to die for God, and to live heroically. To lose all, to die forsaken, to sacrifice ourselves for others; such notions enchant us. But I, heavenly Father, will worship and glorify your purpose, finding in it all the joy of martyrdom, self-sacrifice and duty to my neighbour. This is ...

The reason we get restless with where we are and want, as we say, "more of a challenge" or "a larger field of opportunity" has nothing to do with prophetic zeal or priestly devotion; it is the product of spiritual sin. The sin is generated by the virus of gnosticism. Gnosticism is the ancient but persistently contemporary perversion of the gospel that is contemptuous of place and matter. It holds for that salvation consists in having the right ideas, and the fancier the better. It is impatient with restrictions of place and time and embarrassed by the garbage and disorder of everyday living. It constructs a gospel that majors in fine feelings embellished by the sayings of Jesus. Gnosticism is also impatient with slow-witted people and plodding companions and so always ends up being highly selective, appealing to an elite group of people who are “spiritually deep,” attuned to each other and quoting a cabal of experts. The gospel, on the other hand, is local i...

Without God there can be no order anywhere. How long, then, shall we continue to concern ourselves with our own liberty or our own capacity to suffer the trials and tribulations of the present moment? When will God be all in all to us? Let us see things in their true light and rise above them to live purely in God himself.

The second, and perhaps even more striking phrase, 'The sacrament of the present moment', requires us to do our duty whatever it may be, a carrying out of God's purpose for us, not only this day, or this hour, but this minute, this very minute - now. This is the way we can all strive strive for spiritual perfection in so far as it is available in this life. Pious saint and humble sinner alike will be given the grace to enable them to do so if they truly long for it. (...) And yet his [de Caussade's] doctrine still has a relevant message today for thos who find life purposeless in a society abandoned to the fantasies and arrogance of the pursuit of hapiness which so quickly becomes a pursuit of pleasure; in which suffering, mental or physical, must be drugged out of existence; in which there is no place for the Cross in Christianity. Those whe are ready to believe in God will find confort and hope in the quest for perfection through surrendering themselves to his wi...