20/05/2019
We all suffer in this world more or less, either from anxiety of mind, or sorrow of heart, or pain of body. And nevertheless we all long for rest; we seek it eagerly; and we wear ourselves out all our lives in this search without ever attaining the object of our desires.
Where is rest to be found? Where shall we seek it? This is a most interesting question if ever there was one.
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Let us believe the saints, who speak of it from their own experience. Let us believe St. Paul, who speaks to us of the “peace that passes all understanding.” Let us believe our Lord Jesus Christ, who calls this rest His peace, a divine peace, which the world can neither give nor take away — a peace that we can never obtain by our own efforts because it is the gift of God and is His reward for the absolute and irrevocable gift of ourselves that we have made to Him.
I have said before that this peace has its trials and often even very severe trials; but far from shaking it, these trials only strengthen it. This peace of God rises above all evils and raises us with it. It renders a Christian so happy in the midst of all his sufferings that he would not change his state, however terrible it may seem to human nature, for the most exquisite pleasures the world could offer him. Such is the life of a perfect Christian who goes to God by Jesus Christ and who adores God as Christ adored Him, in spirit and in truth; who sacrifices everything to God, and himself above all. Nothing can destroy the rest and peace of his soul, and death will be for him only a short passage from his rest in time to his eternal rest.
- Fr. Jean Nicolas Grou