4 Maxims to persevere in for perfection - Br. Lawrence of the Resurrection, O.D.C.

4 Maxims for Perfection - Br. Lawrence of the Resurrection, O.D.C., Taken from "Practice of the Presence of God"

0.
ALL THINGS are possible to him who believes; still more to him who hopes; still more to him who loves; and most of all, to him who practices these virtues and perseveres in them. All of those who are baptized, believing as they should, have taken the first step on the way of perfection, and will be perfect as long as they persevere in the practice of the following maxims.

MAXIM I. 
Always regard God in His glory in what we are doing, saying and undertaking: let the end that we propose be to become the most perfect adorers of God in this life, as we hope to be through all eternity. We must make a firm resolution to surmount, with God's grace, all the difficulties met with in the spiritual life.

MAXIM II.
When we undertake the spiritual life, we ought fundamentally to consider who we are; and we will find ourselves deserving all contempt, unworthy of the name of Christian, subject to all sorts of miseries and to an infinity of accidents which upset us and render us unstable in our health, in our moods, in our interior and exterior disposition -- in short, people whom God wills to humble by a countless number of pains and labours, within us as well as without.

MAXIM III.
Unquestionably we must believe that it is good for us and agreeable to God to sacrifice ourselves for Him; that it is usual for His divine Providence to abandon us to all sorts of states, to suffer all kinds of pains, miseries and temptations for the love of God and as long as He pleases -- since, without this submission of heart and mind to the will of God, devotion and perfection cannot exist.

MAXIM IV.
A soul is all the more dependent upon the grace of God, the more it aspires to high perfection, and the help of God is so much the more needed at each moment, because without it the soul can do nothing. The world, the flesh and the devil together wage such fierce and continual war upon her that without this actual help and this humble, necessary dependence they would drag her down in spite of herself; that seems hard to nature, but grace is pleased with the condition and reposes in it.

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