Manifestation and Expression of this Love for God

Manifestation and Expression of this Love for God

Even when she was very young, she felt a pleasant joy in saying again and again to God: “I want to love You, I will love You, I want to long only for Your will. Won’t You grant me the grace to love You, dear God, to love only You and to always and in everything do Your holy will?” She also felt the growing desire to “become a saint.” At the age of eight, she was afraid of not being able to love God appropriately and she wondered: “Could I, oh dear God, love You all my life and always do what pleases You?”
The preserved documents permit to say that these inclinations develop with growing age. They show that she often asked in her prayers the grace to avoid everything that could separate her from God. When she experienced a period of particularly painful aridity, she had the impression that God had abandoned her. But she made an effort and said to God: “Even if You have abandoned me, I will not abandon You. I do not want to do anything that displeases You; no, I do not want to”.
In the Original Rule, there is the pressing recommendation to do everything out of love for God, in order to avoid being a clanging cymbal, as Saint Paul says.
The conversation of the Servant of God was only about God. One was not able to recall any conversation of hers that was not directly turned towards God and the good of souls. “My consolation and an inexpressible grace”, she said, “is that I cannot talk about anything other than about what serves God’s glory and the salvation of souls”. She vowed not to talk to others about anything but about what had to do with God or what touched the salvation of souls.
Father Amhard, a Redemptorist who visited her, said that she talked about God with great ease.