Lord, may you now let us this year once more approach the light, celebration, and joy of Christmas Day that brings us face to face with the greatest thing there is: your love, with which you so loved the world that you gave your only Son, so that all of us may believe in him and therefore not be lost, but may have eternal life.
A door opens in the centre of our being and we seem to fall through it into immense depths which, although they are infinite, are all accessible to us; all eternity seems to have become ours in this one placid and breathless contact.
Say not, “We are unable to set our own hearts on heaven; this must be the work of God only.” Though God be the chief disposer of your hearts, yet, next under him, you have the greatest command of them yourselves. Though without Christ you can do nothing, yet under him you may do much, and must, or else it will be undone, and yourselves undone through your neglect.
While engaged in reading, after resting my mind for a while and desisting from study, I began to meditate on that versicle which in the evening we had sung at Vigils, Thou art fairer than the children of men, and, How beautiful are the feet of them that bring good tidings of Him.
The truth of things hath revealed thee to thy flock as a rule of faith,
an icon of meekness, and a teacher of temperance;
for this cause, thou hast achieved the heights by humility,
riches by poverty.
Cultivate quietness in word, quietness in deed, likewise in speech and gait; and avoid impetuous eagerness. For then the mind will remain steady, and will not be agitated by your eagerness and so become weak and of narrow discernment and see darkly; nor will it be worsted by gluttony, worsted by boiling rage, worsted by the other passions, lying a ready prey to them.
There is nothing created, nothing of the first and second order, nothing lord and servant;
but there is unity and trinity—
there was, there is, and there shall be forever—
which is perceived and adored by faith—
By the favor of God we all arrived at Japan in perfect health on the 15th of August, 1549. We landed at Cagoxima, the native place of our companions. We were received in the most friendly way by all the people of the city, especially the relations of Paul, the Japanese convert, all of whom had the blessing to receive the light of truth from heaven, and by Paul’s persuasion became Christians. During our stay at Cagoxima the people appeared to be wonderfully delighted with the doctrines of the divine law, so entirely new to their ears.
The conviction has been growing for some time past, that steps must be taken to meet the natural desire which the Japanese have for some voice in the management of the evangelistic work in their own country.
I wanted to be a religious and to live for God alone. I wanted to do the most perfect thing whatever it might be. My confessor made me wait three years. As for myself, though I longed to “breathe out my life before God in sheer losing of myself,” as Bossuet says, I did not know what order to choose.