Francois Fenelon Quotes from "The Royal Way of the Cross"

Francois Fenelon, The Royal Way of the Cross

"Do not fear then, that your past faithlessness need make you unworthy of God's mercy.  Nothing is so worthy of mercy as utter weakness.  He came from heaven to earth to seek sinners, not the righteous...  Oh, how God loves those who come boldly to Him in their foul, ragged garments, and ask, as of a Father, for some garment worthy of Him!"

"You wait to be familiar till God shows a smiling face; but I tell you that if you will open your heart thoroughly to Him, you will cease to trouble about the aspect of His face.  Let Him turn a severe and displeased countenance upon you as much as He will, He never loves you more than when he threatens, for he threatens only to prove, to humble, to detach souls."

"Do you want the consolation God can give, or do you want God Himself?  If it is the first, then you do not love God for His own sake, but for yours; and in that case you deserve nothing from Him.  But if you seek Him alone, you will find Him even more truly when He tests you than when He comforts you." 


"What right have we to complain?  We suffer from an excessive attachment to the world - above all to self.  God orders a series of events which detach us gradually from the world first, and finally from the self also.  The operation is painful, but our corruption makes it needful.  If the flesh were sound, the surgeon would not need to probe it.  He uses the knife only in proportion to the depth of the wound and the extent of proud flesh....
He only afflicts us for our correction.  Even when He seems to overwhelm us, it is for our own good, to spare us the greater evil we would do to ourselves.  The things for which we weep would have caused us eternal woe.  God has stored it up safely, to be returned to us in eternity.   He only deprives us of the things we prize in order to teach us to love them purely, truly, and properly, in order that we may enjoy them forever in His presence..."

"People cannot become perfect by hearing or reading about perfection.  The chief thing is not to listen to yourself, but silently to Give ear to God; to renounce all vanity, and apply yourself to real virtue.  Talk little, and do much without caring to be seen... How people delude themselves, when they expect to advance by means of argument and inquisitiveness!  Be lowly, and never expect to find in people those things which are God's only."