Status Updates From Francisco de Osuna: Third S...

Chapter 12 on the value of knowledge and the knowledge of experience concerning God is quite good. It’s been a theme that has popped up often recently.

The Final Treatise is my favorite part. I might have to revisit this part often.❤️

To calm our understanding we must avoid sin, or it will become angry and reproach us, telling us that things are not going well. We can only keep it calm by heeding the Gospel and not consenting to the adversary.

Though you may be persecuted on all sides, do not be dismayed for God will make the truth known, and will deliver you as he did David, who being surrounded on all parts, lost hope of escaping from Saul's hands. Yet God so befriended him that he got the mastery over his enemy, allowing him to go free instead of repaying evil by evil.

Simple love for God has such power that it obtains pardon for sins, though he who feels it may not be thinking of them at the time, for if he remembered them, he would certainly repent and do penance for them. This is virtually included in true love for God, which is a sweet penance.

The Bridegroom cries at midnight that he is coming, but the wise virgins should make ready their lamps, that is, their wills. The dove, which is the gift of the Holy Spirit, comes to the ark of your heart; it is for you to put forth the hand of love and take it in. Take care to remove every obstacle that would impede it, closing your heart securely, acknowledging your weakness and avoiding distractions.

This richest of prayers (Our Father) is so composed that not only does it include all the petitions that the different states of men should make to God, but every just man needs each of the seven things it asks. It should not be omitted even by the greatest sinner, who should beg for the seven things it asks in order to protect himself from vice.

A GOOD religious must first seek goodness and devout discipline, and then learning, and must take care that the latter does not choke devotion like weeds that grow among wheat. An ignorant religious is monstrous in religion, for the servant of God must be discreet and judicious, but there are two ways of learning the one by prayer, the other by study.

It seems I am moving backwards on this book, but the pages are different in the Kindle and paperback versions, and I keep going back and forth between them. I am on the TENTH TREATISE which Speaks of The Tears of Recollection, Saying: ‘Let Tears be Your Weapons in Your Flight for Grace.’ This is the first time I have read anything of this sort. It gives such a rich dimension to the whole subject of tears.

In the 9th Treatise we are told that recollected person loves enclosure, frequent changes of location cause the heart to leave you and one's cell is excellent for recollection.

I've been going back and forth between my print copy and kindle but think I'll stick with the paperback from here on out as I'm taking it to Adoration.