Not seeking compensation

We cannot abandon our life of piety, our life of sacrifice, our life of love. To put on a play before God out of love for him and to please him, to “go against the grain”: this is to be God’s juggler. You can be sure that it is a very beautiful thing to perform a play for Love, with sacrifice, without receiving any personal satisfaction, just to please God, who is playing with us. Live by love, without begging for earthly compensations or seeking wretched little infidelities. Feel proud and well paid by this alone: that we are turning ordinary prose into hexameters of heroic verse.

Fulfilling one’s duty, even though it requires an effort

Love means deeds. Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him (John 14:21). If God sometimes gives us his grace to understand his unsearchable judgments (Rom 11:33) which are sweeter than honey and the honeycomb,¹⁵ such is not the usual course. We have to carry out our duty, not because we like it, but because we are obliged to do so. We should not work just because we feel like it, but because God wants it; and then we should work with good will. That wholehearted love which makes the soul happy is based on suffering, on the joy of going against our own inclinations, to serve God and his Holy Church.