Do not pour yourself out over many things. Do not permit your soul to be immersed in doubts, scruples and preoccupations concerning the past, the present or the future; do not bind yourself by an inordinate attachment to any occupation or to any person. Your intelligence has been given you to know your God, to propose to your will its Sovereign Good, and to adopt in action the best means to attain it. All that you give to creatures outside of this order you take away from God.
Keep a rein on the liberty of your heart, and you will be happy and you will find Christ at the center of your soul. Do not let your desires be multiplied. Restrain the dreams of pleasure, of prosperity and of honor that keep teasing your imagination. Christ has a divine jealousy. He has reduced Himself to naught to come and seek you in your nothingness and sin. Keep for Him then, untouched, all the affection of your heart.
Your heart should always rest with Christ. Do not permit your heart to open freely and attach itself to everything that attracts it. Without that safeguard, your life will be absorbed in other things. Do not think yourself stronger than others who have allowed themselves to be seduced by trivial things. Avoid the occasion of sin. Be resolute and persevering in stamping out any affections that are dangerous to your virtue or injurious to your reputation.
Give your heart into the keeping of the Virgin of virgins. She will watch over its comings in and its goings out and she will see to it that it loves Christ with a perfect love. Your are in the world but not of the world. When all the duties of your state of life have been fulfilled, bury yourself with Christ in the silence of quiet contemplation. Your place of repose after the burden and the heat of the day should be Christ’s Sacred Heart. There you will find your rest and renew your strength.
In Christ,
Rev. Jeffery A. Fasching
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