Saturday, October 10, 2015

The union to which love aspires (St. Francis de Sales)

How can we best be attentive to God?  
(Bet you didn't know 17th-century saints knew about multi-tasking!)  

  In proportion to the number of operations to which the soul applies herself (whether of the same or of a different kind) she does them less perfectly and vigorously: because being finite, her active virtue is also finite, so that furnishing her activity to diverse operations it is necessary that each one of them have less thereof. Thus a man attentive to several things is less attentive to each of them: we cannot quietly consider a person's features with our sight, and at the same time give an exact hearing to the harmony of a grand piece of music, nor at the same instant be attentive to figure and to colour: if we are talking earnestly, we cannot attend to anything else.   (St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God, chapter entitled, That the union to which love aspires is spiritual.)  

Perhaps a little individualized attention to God is in order? 

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