Ave Maria Meditations
St. Charles’ Prayer of Abandonment:
I abandon myself into Your hands; do with me what You will. Whatever You may do, I thank You: I am ready for all, I accept all. Let only Your will be done in me, and in all Your creatures. I wish no more than this, O Lord. Into your hands I commend my soul; I offer it to You with all the love of my heart, for I love You, Lord, and so need to give myself, to surrender myself into Your hands, without reserve, and with boundless confidence, for You are my Father
And from the personal journal of Saint Charles from early on in his reconversion:
Oh God, what is most displeasing to You in my soul? I lack the spirit of prayer, of confidence in You, love, meekness, loyalty and generosity. Jesus is not pleased with me. Dryness and darkness, everything is painful to me; Holy Communion, liturgical and mental prayer, everything, everything even telling Jesus I love him. I must rivet myself to the life of faith. If I could only feel that Jesus loved me. But He never tells me so. What I principally lack is forgetfulness of self and fraternal sympathy with others.
And Jesus responses: you ask me how you have most offended Me. In not loving Me purely, wholeheartedly enough, by loving yourself and by loving created beings for your own sake and theirs. Do nothing for your own sake, nothing for creatures out of self-love, or love of them. And everything you have to do, have eyes only for Me. In everything, ask yourself only what the Master would have done, and do that. Then you’ll love only Me, then I shall live in you, you will lose yourself in the and live in Me. There will be nothing of you left: My kingdom will have come in you.
