A humility that is gentle, peaceful and sweet…
The Providential Ordening of Life
To escape the distress by regret for the past or fear about the future, this is the rule to follow:
leave the past to the infinite mercy of God, the future to his good providence; give the present wholly to his love by being faithful to his grace.
When God in his goodness sends you some disappointment, one of those trials that used to annoy you so much, before everything thank him for it as for a great favour all the more useful for the great work of your perfection in that is completely overturns the work of the moment.
Try, in spite of interior dislike, to show a kind face to troublesome people, or to those who come to chatter about their troubles; leave at once prayer, reading, choir Office, in fact anything, to go where Providence calls you; and do what is asked of you quietly, peacefully, without hurry and without vexation.
Should you fail in any of these points, make immediately an act of interior humility – not that sort of humility full of uneasiness and irritation against which St Francis de Sales said so much, but a humility that is gentle, peaceful and sweet.
