Thursday, March 17 : Saint Claude la Colombière

The happiness of that life is the fulfilment of every desire. The happiness of this life is the annihilation of all desires. (…) Desires grow insofar as we obtain what we have desired: the possession of what we have wished for only feeds our desires without satisfying the soul. The soul only desires this responsibility because it is persuaded, seduced by the senses and people’s mistaken opinions, that this responsibility will satisfy it. But seeing that it is only a drop of water in an abyss, it turns to other objects that the senses present to it once again as good things capable of filling it. The bad rich person only asks for a drop of water; that is their only desire. I leave you to imagine whether that would have staunched their thirst. It will not. But when it had done, etc. If we were to get the fulfilment of all our desires in this life then we would not think any longer about the other, and so God, who loves us, arranges things otherwise. (…) Can we reach this true contentment in this world? The worldly pleasures that satisfy us in the first place: honors, glory, and the wealth that never satisfies, all those false goods of which some disgust and for which others are hungry, that pass like smoke and whose use is always troubled by a heap of endless misfortunes and the terrible image of death where they will all finally end; can these produce this happiness?
Roman Catholic Ordinary Calendar – rosary,team