from the very goodness of these works;
us and with us are pleasing to God. Consequently, we learn that we cannot serve God unless our tongue, hands, and heart are used by God and the Spirit to do what God would have us do.
If we were not utterly impotent, our good works would be our own property. But now they belong entirely to God because they flow from God and from God's grace. While giving rise to our works and making them sanctified, God is honored in us through them.
One of the cardinal rules of religion is to lose no opportunity to serve God. Because God cannot be seen, we are to serve God in our neighbor. God receives such service as if it were done to God in person, standing visibly before us.*
God does not love people who are inconsistent, or good works that are sporadic. The only thing pleasing to God is a life and service that resembles God's own constancy and faithfulness.
A constant attention to the work that God entrusts to us is a mark of solid piety.
Love fasts when it can and as much as it can. It leads to all the means of grace and applies itself in all the outward works it is able to do. It flies, as it were, like Elijah over the plain to find God upon his holy mountain.'
God is so great that greatness is given to the smallest thing that is done for God's service.
Happy are they who are sick or even lose their life for doing a good work.
God frequently conceals the part that we children have in the conversion of other souls. However, whenever a soul is converted to God, we may boldly say that one of the chief causes is the person who persistently intercedes before God for that conversion.
Charity cannot be practiced correctly unless ¢ first, we perform it the moment God gives the opportunity, and ¢ second, we depart immediately afterward to offer it to God in humble thanksgiving. We do this for three reasons:
1. to return to God what we have received from God; 2. to avoid the dangerous temptation that emerges from the very goodness of these works; 3. to unite ourselves to God, in whom the soul expands itself in prayer, with all the graces we have received and the good works we have done, to draw from God new strength against the bad effects these very works may produce in us if we do not make use of the antidotes God has ordained against these poisons.
The true way to be filled anew with the riches of grace is to strip ourselves of it. Without this it is extremely difficult not to grow faint in the practice of good works.
Good works are not complete in their own right until they lose themselves in God. This is a kind of death to them. It