Quod gratia devotionis humilitate, et sui ipsius abnegatione acquiritur.

Seeking and Waiting for Grace

The soul is urged to seek the grace of devotion earnestly, to wait patiently even when it is delayed, and to trust that God gives in His own time.

You need to seek the grace of devotion earnestly, ask for it with longing, wait for it patiently and with confidence, receive it gratefully, guard it humbly, and work diligently with it — and leave to God the time and manner of his heavenly visitation, until it comes.¹² You ought to humble yourself especially when you feel little or nothing of devotion within — but don't be cast down too much, or grieve in a disordered way.³⁴ God often gives in one brief moment what he denied over a long stretch of time. Sometimes he gives at the end what he put off giving at the very start of prayer.⁵

Why Grace Is Withheld

Grace is sometimes withheld to protect the weak, and its absence is often due to some small but serious attachment that must be removed.

If grace were always given quickly and were present on request, it wouldn't sit well with a weak person. For that reason, the grace of devotion is to be awaited in good hope and humble patience. But attribute it to yourself and to your sins, since it is not given — or even is secretly taken away. Sometimes it's a small thing that hinders and hides grace — though it ought to be called not small but rather great, since it prevents so great a good. But if you remove this thing itself, whether small or great, and overcome it completely, what you have asked for will come to you.

The Empty Vessel Receives

Wholehearted surrender to God and self-emptying make the soul a fit vessel for grace, which fills the humble and detached heart abundantly.

For as soon as you give yourself over to God with your whole heart, and stop seeking this or that according to your own pleasure or desire, but place yourself entirely in Him, you will find yourself united to Him and at peace, because nothing will taste so good to you or please you as the good pleasure of God's will.^✦⁶⁷ Whoever, then, lifts up their intention with a simple heart toward God on high, and empties themselves of every disordered love or displeasure toward any created thing, will be most fit to receive grace and worthy of the gift of devotion. For the Lord gives His blessing where He finds empty vessels, and the more perfectly anyone renounces the things below, and the more they die to themselves through self-contempt, the more quickly grace comes, the more abundantly it enters, and the more deeply it lifts up the free heart.^✦^✦⁸⁹¹⁰

The Blessed Receiver of the Eucharist

The soul wholly given to God overflows with grace, is declared blessed, and merits divine union in receiving the Eucharist by seeking God's glory above its own consolation.

Then he will see, and he will overflow with grace, and he will marvel, and his heart will be enlarged in God's presence — because the hand of the Lord is with him, and he has placed himself entirely into his hand, forever.^✦¹¹¹² See, this is the person who is blessed — the one who seeks God with his whole heart, and does not labor in vain.^✦¹³ In receiving the sacred Eucharist, such a person merits the great grace of divine union — because he looks not to his own devotion and consolation, but to the glory and honor of God.¹⁴¹⁵¹⁶

Read the original Latin

Oportet te devotionis gratiam instanter quærere, desideranter petere, patienter et fiducialiter exspectare, gratanter recipere, humiliter conservare, studiose cum ea operari, ac Deo tempus et modum supernæ visitationis, donec veniat, committere. Humiliare præcipue te debes, cum parum, aut nihil devotionis interius sentis, sed non nimium dejici, nec inordinate contristari. Dat sæpe Deus in uno brevi momento, quod longo negavit tempore. Dat quandoque in fine, quod in principio orationis distulit dare.

Si semper cito gratia daretur, et pro voto adesset, non esset infirmo homini bene portabile. Propterea in bona spe et humili patientia exspectanda est devotionis gratia. Tibi tamen, et peccatis tuis imputa, cum non datur vel etiam occulte tolitur. Modicum quandoque est quod gratiam impedit et abscondit, si tamen modicum et non potius grande dici debeatur, quod tantum bonum prohibet. Sed si hoc ipsum modicum vel grande amoveris et perfecte viceris, erit quod petiisti.

Statim namque ut te Deo ex toto corde tradideris, nec hoc vel illud pro tuo libitu seu velle quæsieris, sed integre te in illo posueris, unitum te invenies et pacatum, quia nihil ita tibi sapiet et placebit, sicut beneplacitum divinæ voluntatis. Quisquis ergo intentionem suam simplici corde sursum ad Deum levaverit, seque ab omni inordinato amore, seu displicentia cujuslibet rei creatæ evacuaverit, aptissimus gratiæ percipiendæ, ac dignus devotionis munere erit: dat enim Dominus ibi benedictionem suam, ubi vasa vacua invenerit, et quanto perfectius infimis quis renunciaverit, et magis sibi ipsi per contemtum sui moritur, tanto gratia celerius venit, copiosius intrat, et altius cor liberum elevat.

Tunc videbit et affluet et mirabitur et dilatabitur cor ejus in ipso, quia manus Domini cum illo est, et ipse se posuit totaliter in manu ejus usque in sæculum. Ecce sic benedicetur homo, qui quærit Deum in toto corde suo, nec in vanum accipit animam suam. Hic in accipiendo sacram Eucharistiam magnam promeretur divinæ unionis gratiam, quia non respicit ad propriam devotionem et consolationem, sed ad Dei gloriam et honorem.

Scripture echoes

↩Ps.131.2 — Surely I have stilled and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; like a weaned child is my soul within me.
↩2Cor.4.7 — But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that the surpassing power belongs to God and not from us.
↩John.3.30 — He must increase, but I must decrease.
↩Isa.58.11 — And the LORD will guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in scorching places, and your bones he will strengthen; and you shall be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.
↩Ps.118.2;Ps.119.2 — Let Israel now say, "His steadfast love endures forever." Ps.119.2 — Happy are those who keep his testimonies; with their whole heart they seek him.

Notes

1 ↩devotionis gratiam: 'grace of devotion' preserves the sacramental register of Book 4; gratia rendered as 'grace' per lexeme policy.
2 ↩ac before Deo is additive, linking the final infinitive clause to the preceding series; rendered as 'and' to preserve the chain of imperatives.
3 ↩sed introduces a corrective contrast to the preceding clause; rendered as 'but' to preserve the adversative force.
4 ↩inordinate contristari: 'grieve in a disordered way' captures the sense of inordinate as lacking proper order or measure, not merely 'excessively.'
5 ↩quod introduces a relative clause of content; rendered as 'what' to link the gift to the earlier postponement.
6 ↩The ut-clause is rendered as temporal/result ('as soon as'), capturing the force of the perfect subjunctive tradideris. Nec coordinates as a negative continuation of the same clause.
7 ↩Libitu (archaic ablative of libitus/libido) rendered as 'pleasure' to convey self-willed desire; seu velle ('or wish') is a near-synonym reinforcing the same idea.
8 ↩Ergo marks an inferential conclusion drawn from the preceding section. Enim ('for') introduces the explanatory reason for why such a person is fit for grace.
9 ↩Contemtum (contemptus) rendered as 'self-contempt' to preserve the ascetical sense of despising oneself before God, not modern psychological self-hatred.
10 ↩The image of God filling 'empty vessels' (vasa vacua) echoes biblical vessel/jar imagery (cf. 2 Cor 4:7; Judges 7:16 in the Vulgate tradition), though no direct quotation is marked.
11 ↩The string of four futures (videbit, affluet, mirabitur, dilatabitur) is rendered with parallel 'will' constructions to preserve the cumulative force of the Latin. The causal quia clause grounds the whole sequence in God's sustaining hand.
12 ↩affluet rendered 'overflow with grace' to capture the devotional sense of spiritual abundance; the Latin verb alone means 'flow to/abound' but the Eucharistic context supplies the object.
13 ↩nec in vanum accipit animam suam: literally 'nor does he receive his soul in vain.' The idiom is rendered 'does not labor in vain' to capture the sense that the whole self is not spent fruitlessly. animam suam → 'his soul' is preserved in sense though the English idiom shifts to 'labor' for naturalness.
14 ↩sacram Eucharistiam: rendered 'sacred Eucharist' to preserve the sacramental gravity required by Book 4 register policy. The adjective sacram (accusative feminine singular of sacer) modifies Eucharistiam.
15 ↩devotionem: rendered 'devotion' per lexeme policy; in this context it refers to the person's own felt devotional experience, which is set aside in favor of God's glory.
16 ↩The parallel ad … ad … structure ('not to … but to …') is preserved to maintain the contrast between self-referential devotion and God-centered intention.