That it will never be fit for the reception of our sovereign Lord unless He Himself furnishes it and arranges in it the precious furniture suitable for such a guest.
That the only way in which He will do this and enrich your soul with His gifts will be during the silence and peace of prayer.
Your duty is, therefore, to keep the hall well swept and clean with the help of grace, and then, give place to Him who will make it His own business to supply the beautiful furniture with which it is to be enriched, and who wishes to arrange it according to his own taste.
Do not go and upset yourself for nothing is a matter in which you would spoil everything by interference. Let him do as he likes; consider yourself as a picture which a great master is proposing to paint; but take courage, for I foresee that it will take some time to grind and powder the colors, and then to lay them on, combine them and shade them. All you have to do is to keep the canvas ready, well-cleaned, and fastened on its two motionless pivots, the one being self-humiliation pushed to the point of self-annihilation, the other a complete self-abandonment pushed to the point of losing your will altogether in the will of God.
Father Jean-Pierre de Caussade, S.J.
