I want to share a bit more from the book, Prayer and Intelligence.
This holy couple gives advice to the laity who are caught up in the frenzy of the world.
Here are some points to help the laity when events and time do not allow for contemplation.
1) Throw one's self into one's "littleness" and embrace humility.
2) Abandon one's self to God's mercy.
3) Abandon one's self to God's Providence.
4) Constantly give thanks for all thinks, taking joy in the Lord.
5) Be kind to all creatures, great and small.
6) Abstain from judging others.
7) Enlarge one's heart by admiring, understanding the freedom and variety of how God's ways are in the world.
8) Prepare one's soul for the counsels of perfection , if one is not able to do these (poverty, chastity, obedience) in the same way as religious in the ways outlined below.
9)Work on purity of heart, which "cleanses the intelligence and the will from the imprint of created things...a spiritual chastity"..
10) Work on detachment "which causes us to make use of ourselves and created things 'as if not using them'...a kind of spiritual poverty".
11) Abandon one's self to Providence, "which causes us to cast all our care on God and give us up to his good pleasure....like a spiritual obedience, which penetrates to the most intimate depth of the soul, and, while it makes us free of the whole created world, (and) obliges us to depend in everything on the conduct of the Holy Spirit."
This is the whole perfection series in a nutshell.
In these ways, the Maritains write that one will be able to take up one's cross daily, faithfully following the Lord, and living in His Presence. In addition, one will "adhere with his whole soul...to Him who is above all thought and who wishes to transform us into himself by love."
Actually, I shall return to this book again at a later time,,,as there is more.
