FAITH

Let nothing frighten you, All things are passing away: God never changes. Patience obtains all things. Whoever has God lacks nothing; God alone suffices. Saint Teresa of Avila

Our great drama is this: Man does not have confidence in God. Hence he looks in every possible place to extricate himself by his own resources and renders himself terribly unhappy in the process rather than abandon himself into the tender and saving hands of his Father in heaven. Yet, how unjustified this lack of confidence is! Isn’t it absurd that a child would thus doubt his Father, when this Father is the best and most powerful Who could exist, when He is the Father in heaven? In spite of that, it is in this absurdity that we most frequently live. Searching For & Maintaining Peace by Rev. Jacques Philippe

Finally, too many people are distressed because they are not contemplatives. They do not take the time to nourish their own hearts and return them to peace by gazing with love on Jesus. Searching For & Maintaining Peace by Rev. Jacques Philippe

To contemplate Jesus Who gives His life for us, nourishes us with “too great a love” that He expresses on the cross; that is what really inspires confidence. Would not the supreme proof of love — Greater love than this no man has than to lay down his life for his friends (John 15:13) — untiringly contemplated and captured in a gaze of love and faith, fortify our hearts little by little in an unshakable confidence? What can one fear from a God Who manifested His love in so evident a manner? How could He not be for us, completely, entirely and absolutely in our favor; how could He not do all things for us, this God, friend of humankind, Who did not spare His only Son for us, even though we were sinners? And if God is for us, who could be against us (Romans 8:32)? If God is for us, what evil could possibly harm us? Searching For & Maintaining Peace by Rev. Jacques Philippe

One can never insist enough on the necessity of quiet, meditative prayer — the real source of interior peace. How can one abandon oneself to God and have confidence in Him if one only knows Him from a distance, by hearsay? I had heard of You by word of mouth, but now my eye has seen You (Job 42:5). Searching For & Maintaining Peace by Rev. Jacques Philippe

The heart does not awaken to confidence until it awakens to love; we need to feel the gentleness and the tenderness of the Heart of Jesus. This cannot be obtained except by the habit of meditative prayer, by this tender repose in God which is contemplative. Searching For & Maintaining Peace by Rev. Jacques Philippe

That which God demands of us always goes beyond our natural human possibilities! Searching For & Maintaining Peace by Rev. Jacques Philippe

It is important to know one thing: We cannot experience this support from God unless we leave Him the necessary space in which He can express Himself. I would like to make a comparison. As long as a person who must jump with a parachute does not jump out into the void, he cannot feel that the cords of the parachute will support him, because the parachute has not yet had the chance to open. One must first jump and it is only later that one feels carried. And so it is in spiritual life. … This is where the problem lies. Many do not believe in Providence because they’ve never experienced it, but they’ve never experienced it because they’ve never jumped into the void and taken the leap of faith. They never give it the possibility to intervene. They calculate everything, anticipate everything, they seek to resolve everything by counting on themselves, instead of counting on God. Searching For & Maintaining Peace by Rev. Jacques Philippe

In abandoning myself to God, I experience in a concrete fashion that “it really works,” that God makes all things work together for my good, even evil, even suffering, even my own sins. How many occasions that I dreaded, when they arrived, in the final analysis proved to be supportable, and finally beneficial, after the first impact of pain. That which I believed to be working against me revealed itself to be to my benefit. Thus, I tell myself: that which God does for me in His infinite Mercy, He must do for others also; in a mysterious and hidden manner, He must do it for the entire world. Searching For & Maintaining Peace by Rev. Jacques Philippe