Annual Retreat Exercise #1: The effects of God’s grace in our souls should make us more grateful and loving of God

October 17, 2021 • 1 min

#BibleCommentary #DoctorsOfTheChurch #Exhortation #Meditations

From Introduction to the Devout Life, page 265
By St. Francis de Sales

Consider the effects of this vocation, and comparing what you now are with what you have been, you will doubtless find in yourself a great change for the better.

Do you not esteem it a happiness to know how to converse with God by prayer; to be inflamed with a desire to love Him; to have obtained a complete victory over the many passions wherewith you were troubled; to have avoided innumerable sins and perplexities of conscience; and, in fine, to have communicated so much oftener than you would have done, uniting yourself to that sovereign source of never-ending grace?

Ah, how great are these favours! We must weigh them, Philothea, with the weights of the sanctuary; it is God’s right hand that has done all this: “The right hand of the Lord,” says David, “hath exalted me; I shall not die, but live, and shall declare with my heart, with my mouth, and by my actions, the wonderful works of the Lord.” (Ps. cxvii.)

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After all these considerations, which must, doubtless, furnish you with many pious affections, conclude simply with an act of thanksgiving and fervent prayer, that you may make good use of them: and so retire with the most profound humility and utmost confidence in God, deferring the making the effort of your resolutions till after the second point of this exercise.