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Friday of the Tenth week in Ordinary Time

Commentary of the day
The Imitation of Christ, spiritual treatise of the 15th century
Book II, 4

“If your eyes are good, your body will be filled with light” (Mt 6:22)

There must be simplicity in one’s intention and purity in one’s affection.

Simplicity seeks God; purity finds him and savors him.

No good work will be difficult for you if you are interiorly free of all disordered affection.

If you want only what God wants and what is useful for your neighbor, you will enjoy interior freedom.

If your heart were upright then every creature would be for you a mirror of life and a book full of holy instruction.

There is no creature so small and so base that it does not show some image of God’s goodness.

If you had enough innocence and purity within you, you would see everything without hindrance. A pure heart penetrates heaven and hell.

Each person judges what is outside according to what he is within himself.

If there is any joy in the world, the pure heart possesses it.

'Tell me, my dear brethren, what are the penances that are given to you? Alas! A few rosaries, some litanies, some almsgivings, a few little mortifications. Do all of these things, I ask you, bear any proportion to our sins which deserve eternal punishment? There are some who carry out their penance walking along or sitting down; that is not doing it at all. Unless the priest tells you that you may do it while walking along or sitting down, you should do your penance on your knees. If you do perform your penance while walking along or sitting down, you should confess it and never do it again.'

St. Jean Marie Baptiste Vianney, the Cure of Ars