Do not wish for many things

Do not wish for many things, whether they are within or out of reach. Instead, take care to sanctify the little you have.

Mother Gabriel

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A child in a huge library

The human mind is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceilings with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. But the child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books—-a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects.

Einstein

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Say yes to goodness

For each human being there is a date, unknown to all and to himself above all, but entirely determined, after which the soul can no longer keep its virginity. If before this precise instant, eternally marked, it has not consented to being taken by goodness, it will immediately be taken by evil.

A man can give himself over to evil at any moment in his life, for one gives oneself unconsciously and without knowing that one is introducing an external authority inside oneself; the soul drinks a narcotic before it gives its virginity. It is not necessary to say yes to evil to be seized by it.

But goodness only takes the soul when it has said yes. And the fear of the nuptial union is such that no soul has the power to say yes to goodness until it is pushed urgently by the almost immediate approach of the limiting instant where its fate will be fixed for eternity. For some the limiting instant can take place at the age of five, for others at sixty. In fact, it is impossible to situate it either before or after having passed through it, for the instantaneous and eternal choice only appears refracted by the passage of time. For those who have let themselves be taken by evil long before approaching the limiting instant, this instant no longer has any reality. The most a human being can do is to keep intact within him the faculty of saying yes to goodness until he is very near to it.

Simone weil

Simone Weil on Prayer taught by Christ

Pater aymohn ho en toyss ooranoyss,	Our father who art in heaven,
agiasthaytoh to onomasoo,	hallow be thy name,
elthetoh hay basileya soo,	thy kingdom come,
genaythaytoh to thelayma soo,	thy will be done,
hohss en ooranoh kai epi gayss	on earth as it is in heaven,
ton arton haymohn ton epioosion dos haymin saymeron	give us this day our daily bread
kai aphess haymin ta opheilaymata haymohn	and forgive us our trespasses
hohss kai haymeiss aphyemen toyss opheyletaiss haymohn	as we forgive those who trespass against us
kai may eisenenkayss haymass eyss peirasmon	and lead us not into temptation
alla rusai haymass apo too ponayroo	but deliver us from evil

Up until last september, I had not prayed even once in my life, at least in the litteral sense of the word. I had never addressed words to God aloud or mentally

The virtue of this practice is extraordinary and surprises me every time I do it, for, even though I live it every day, it goes beyond my expectation every time. Sometimes the first words already tear my thought outside my body and transport it to a place outside space from which there is neither perspective or point of view. Space opens up. The infinity of ordinary space is replaced by an infinity to second or third power. At the same time this infinity of infinities fills itself to the brim with silence, a silence that is not an absence of sound, and that is the object of a positive sensation, more positive than that of a sound. Noises, if there are any, only reach me after going through this silence.

Sometimes also, during this recitation or at other moments, Christ is present in person, but with a presence that is infinitely more real, more poignant, more clear and more full of love than the first time he took me.

I never would have taken it upon me to tell you all this if I wasn't leaving. And as I leave with more or less the thought of a probable death, it seems to me that I do not have the right to not speak of these things. For after all, in all of this, it's not about me. It's about God. I have nothing to do with it.

The words of the Pater are perfectly pure.  If you recite the Pater with no other intention than to pay the fullness of one's attention on the words themselves, you are completely sure to be delivered by this means from a part, as small as it may be, of the evil you hold inside you. In the same way if you look at the Holy Sacrement with no other thought than that Christ is there, and so on.

The only pure things down here are sacred objects and texts, the beauty of nature if you look at it for itself and not as a place for your reveries, and, to a lesser extent, human beings in whom God lives and works of art issued from divine inspiration.

That which is perfectly pure can not be anything else but God present down here. If it was something else than God, it would not be pure. If God was not present, we would never be saved. In the soul where there has been a contact with purity, all its horror of the evil that it carries inside it changes into love for divine purity. This is how Mary-Magdalene and the good thief were privileged by love

Simone Weil (from a letter in May1942)