Why do we not have this hunger and thirst? Why are our souls not as hungry and thirsty as our bodies are? Bodies that have no desire for food are sick. In the same way, our souls suffer from sickness when we do not seek after the things that satisfy them, nor the good and drink that come from God.

The soul’s food is truth and righteousness. To know good, to be filled with it, to strengthen ourselves with it—this is the spiritual food, the food from Heaven, that we need to eat. So let us reach out and eat it; let us be hungry for it. Let us stand before God as poor beggars who wait hopefully and expectantly for a little bread. Let us be aware of our weakness and our failure. How terrible for us if we forget how weak we are!

Let us read, let us pray, with that hunger to nourish our souls and that burning desire to quench our thirst, Only a continual great desire to be taught by God can make us worthy of discovering the wonders of his law.

Each of us receives this sacred bread to the extent that we desire it.

—François Fenelon

Lord, what wilt thou have me to do? (St. Paul, in Acts 9:6 KJV)

Saint Paul was miraculously turned around and changed by the grace of the Savior he was persecuting. Alas! How much have we persecuted Him through our unfaithfulness, our petulance, and our untamed emotions that have disturbed the work He is doing? He has had to bring us low through trials; he has had to crush our pride; he has had to baffle our fleshly wisdom; he has had to dismay our vaunted self-worth.

Therefore let us say to him, “Lord, what do you have for me to do?—I am ready to do anything you ask.” We must make this offer complete, holding nothing back. We must not make vague promises we will not actually put into practice when it comes to details. Saint Augustine tells us that for too long we have been dragging around with weak wills, longing after good but not putting forth the effort to bring it about.

It does not cost us anything to want to become mature, if we do not put forth any effort to become mature. We need to want God’s maturity and perfection in our lives more than anything else.

So let us each probe our hearts and ask ourselves—am I determined to sacrifice to God my strongest friendships, my most deeply rooted habits, my foremost inclinations, and my most gratifying pleasures to become more holy?

—François Fenelon

All our heart and all our time are not too much to give to God; he gave them to us only to serve and love him. We cannot be doing great things all the time, but we can do the things that are suitable to our condition in life. We are already doing a great deal if we hold our tongues, suffer, and pray when we cannot do something outwardly.

To offer up to God each mishap, setback, complaint, or confusion. To comfort a sick person, encourage a downcast soul, prevent suffering at its onset, teach a person who needs instruction, or soften the heart of someone who is bitter—all these things serve to redeem eternity through the good use of time.

But to truly gain eternity, we must redeem the time itself, as Saint Paul says. This means we must renounce engaging in excessive amusements and unnecessary exchanges with other people. We need to renounce pouring out our hearts to others in order to flatter our self-esteem and carrying on conversations that divert the mind, so we can be free to go about God’s work more diligently. Promise him that you will be faithful to your disciplines of prayer and worship.

—François Fenelon

We can enter the kingdom of God only through a hard struggle. We have to assault it as if we were laying siege to it. It has a narrow door. To get through that door, we have to put our sinful frames through discomfort by taking a low place, by submitting, by crawling, by making ourselves small.

The large, wide-open door that the crowd is passing through leads to distraction. All the wide roads that join together and lead to that wide-open door should make us feel afraid. In fact, when the world is laughing with us and our path seems sweet, we ought to realize how unfortunate we are! We will never be good for the life of eternity unless we feel ill at ease in this one.

So let us be careful not to follow the crowd that limits itself to following the broad and comfortable road. We must walk in the footsteps of that small band of saints, climbing up the steep-sloped path of repentance, clambering over the rocks with sweat on our faces. And we must expect that the last step in our lives will be yet one more violent effort to pass through the narrow door of eternity.

—François Fénelon

The more we fear crosses, the more we have to conclude that we need them. And the heavier our crosses are, the more we have to believe that God loves us. We ought to judge the seriousness of our illnesses by the strength of the treatment the spiritual Physician applies to them.

We must be very corrupt, and God must be very merciful, since he takes great pains to heal us—even though the process of healing may be difficult. So let us turn our crosses themselves into a source of love, comfort and faith, saying with Saint Paul, ‟For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison”.

Happy are those who go forth weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, for they will bring in an indescribably joyful harvest of eternal life!

—François Fenelon