If there are in me such marvels, if my soul, like Mary's, though to a lesser degree, serves as a living tabernacle for the Holy Trinity, how I ought to exert myself during prayer to penetrate my interior riches as deeply as possible and to keep recollected throughout the day that the treasure within may not be lost.
I must not content myself with a superficial knowledge of the splendors of my life of grace. I must study it, plumb its depths. I must realize that this is the great secret. What can be wanting to a soul who has discovered both the reality of God and His nearness?
I have lived so long under the impression that things relating to the invisible world have, so to speak, no real existence. That is false. The invisible world is more real than the visible world. I have lived for such a long time under the equally false impression that God is distant. He is quite near. When I have discovered the proximity of the invisible world, then I will have discovered everything.
Reality, proximity, God...in me! The Invisible dwelling within my soul, on terms of intimacy with me. And all this is true! Could He be nearer?
But if that is so, how ought I to conduct myself in the routine of life? As one who does not know? Or who knowing does not realize?
That would be atrocious, absurd. "Act," says a modem writer, "so that what is may be." I don't have to create this mysterious world in me; it is in me. But I must so act that it may be something for me, something which counts.
I will give to the magnificent realities I bear within me their value as realities.
_________________
Adapted from Meditations for Religious
by Father Raoul Plus, S.J. (© 1939, Frederick Pustet Co.)
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