Self-love, with its subtle finesse, is ever persuading us that if we have no hand in it, all will not go well.
Saint Jane de Chantal
Are you giving your whole being to God and surrendering yourself to his care?
Stay that way and replace all your self-scrutiny with a pure and simple glance at his goodness. In that glance, let all your fears and introspections die. Stop being so hard on yourself, forever in despair over all your problems, wallowing in your misery and choosing to make yourself a martyr.
Some people can be greatly afflicted when they have committed any fault; feeling like they could never change nor help falling again, so that when they speak about it, they shed many tears. Consider such tears as coming from self-love; and all our childishness and nonsense and all our surprise and disappointment at seeing ourselves as imperfect, only come from our forgetting the maxim of the saints: "We must begin again every day."
The best and the greatest practice of patience which you can possibly make in the spiritual life is to bear with yourself in your weaknesses and powerlessness of will to do what is right, in which your poor soul finds itself at times.
Saint Jane de Chantal
