• Gen. 22:1-19: God himself will provide...

• Habakkuk3:16-19: Yet, I will rejoice in the Lord...

• Ps. 69: At an acceptable time... answer me.

• Ps. 22: My God, my God why have you forsaken me...

• Mt. 6:25-33: Seek you first the Kingdom of God...

• Lk. 23:46: Father, into your hands I commend my spirit

• 2Cor.6:4-10: We commend ourselves in every way...

• 2Cor.11:16-33: Danger at sea, danger from false brothers and sisters... I have laboured and toiled, I have known hunger and thirst...

• Phil. 1:19-24: I am hard pressed between the two: to live is Christ and to die is gain.

Religious Profession creates a new bond between the person and the One and Triune God, in Jesus Christ. This bond develops on the foundation of the original bond that is contained in the sacrament of Baptism. Religious profession is deeply rooted in baptismal consecration and is a fuller expression of it. In this way religious profession in its constitutive content, becomes a new consecration the consecration and giving of the human person to God, loved above all else. The commitment undertaken by means of the vows to practise the evangelical counsels of chastity, poverty and obedience, according to the determinations proper to each religious Family as laid down in the Constitutions, is the expression of a total consecration to God and, at the same time, the means that leads to its achievement. This is also the source of the manner proper to consecrated persons of bearing witness and of exercising the apostolate. And yet it is necessary to seek the roots of that conscious and free consecration and of the subsequent giving of self to God as his possession in Baptism, the sacrament that leads us to the Paschal Mystery as the apex and centre of the Redemption accomplished by Christ (Redemptionis Donum, 7).

What has been said indicates what degree of renunciation is demanded by the practice of the religious life. You must feel something of the force with which Christ was drawn to his Cross - that baptism he had still to receive, by which that fire would be lighted which sets you too ablaze - something of that foolishness which Saint Paul wishes we all had, because it alone makes us wise. Let the Cross be for you, as it was for Christ, proof of the greatest love. Is there not a mysterious relationship between renunciation and joy, between sacrifice and magnanimity, between discipline and spiritual freedom (Pope Paul VI, On the Renewal of the Religious Life According to the Teaching of the Second Vatican Council, 29).

The heart of a disinterested man is like wax in God's hand, ready for every impression of the eternal will. Such a heart knows no personal preference, equally prepared for anything, its one aim the fulfilling of God's will. It is not attracted by the things God wants, only by his will that wants them. So, when God's will includes several things, the heart chooses the one where God's will is chiefly to be found, cost what it may. God's permissive will is to be found both in marriage mid in virginity. Since God favours virginity, the uncommitted heart will choose that state, though it costs life itself- as happened to St. Thecla the spiritual protégée of St. Paul, to St. Cecilia, to St. Agatha, and to countless others. God's will is to be found in serving both rich and poor, but preferably the poor; the uncommitted heart will choose to serve the poor. God's will includes moderation in pleasures, patience in trials; the man who shows no personal preference will choose the latter, for God's will is more in evidence there.

What becomes of the human will when it is completely surrendered to what God wants? It is not entirely lost but so swallowed up in God's will, so blended with it, that there are no signs of it any longer, for it has no will other than God's... But if a man's will is dead to self, to come alive to God's will, it no longer chooses for itself, it not only complies with God's will, and submits to it, it is utterly self-obliterated, transformed into the divine.

When we have no will of our own. but simply allow ourselves to be carried in the arms of his permissive will by a wondrous consent which can be given the name of union-or rather, perfect oneness of will with God. You see. God's permissive will is nothing but the working out of his providence, events that happen beyond our control (Treatise on the Love of God, Book IX. chapters 4 & 14).

One Lent when he had prepared his sermon and was ready to leave he got ill and had a high fever. He wrote to me: If God doesn't want me to serve him by preaching but by being ill instead, well and good, may his will be done. (Testimony, p. 115).

One couldn't possibly express in words how extremely detached he was, it is a certain fact that his own will was completely at one with God's will. He said that he let our Lord will for him and that he put all care about himself into God's hands. He was perfectly detached and indifferent about sickness or health, life or death, praise or blame, about the use of his time and of his whole life, about poverty or wealth and about the presence or absence of the people who were dear to him; and in short, his heart was utterly detached and he loved God's will above everything else. That is why, as he himself told me, he was actually infinitely happier in times of trouble and distress, because then he could give in to God completely and be at one with him, far above feelings of any kind (Testimony, pp. 115-116).

What a marvellous thing you said when you wrote to me: as long as I am serving God I don't care what kind of sauce he puts me in. But be careful to chew this over and over again in your mind; let it melt in your mouth and do not swallow it whole. Mother Theresa whom you love so much as in whom I too rejoice, says somewhere that we often say certain words by habit and, as it were, only half aware of their meaning; we think they come from the depths of our soul, but we may discover later on when it comes to the test that this is far from being the case. Well, you tell me it is all the same to you whatever the sauce. Come now, you know very well into what sauce he has put you, into what state of life and condition; and tell me, it is all the same to you? And you also know that he wants you to pay that debt day by day, and you write and tell me about it and surely this is not all the same to you. Dear Lord, how subtly self-love slips into our feelings, even if they look and seem so very devout! (Selected Letters, pp. 88-89).