occasion for so doing occurs. This omission will be a species of obedience.
Fill up its measure by charity."

From this spirit of holy and Christian liberty originated the saying so
often to be met with in his letters: "Keep your heart in peace." That is to
say: Beware of hurry, anxiety, and bitterness of heart. These he called the
ruin of devotion. He was even unwilling that people should meditate upon
the great truths of Death, Judgment and Hell, unless they at the same time
reassured themselves by the remembrance of God's love for them. Speaking to
a holy soul, he says: "Meditation on the four last things will be useful to
you provided that you always end with an act of confidence in God. Never
represent to yourself Death or Hell on the one side unless the Cross is on
the other; so that when your fears have been excited by the one you may
with confidence turn for help to the other." The one point on which he
chiefly insisted was that we must fear God from love, not love God from
fear. "To love Him from fear," he used to say, "is to put gall into our
food and to quench our thirst with vinegar; but to fear Him from love is to
sweeten aloes and wormwood."

Assuredly, our own experience convinces us that it is difficult to love
those whom we fear, and that it is impossible not to fear with a filial and
reverent fear those whom we love.

You find some difficulty, it seems, my sisters, in understanding how all
things, as St. Paul says,[1] whether good, bad, or indifferent, can in the
end work together for good to those who love God.

To satisfy you, I quote the words of Blessed Francis on this subject in one
of his letters. "Since," he says, "God can bring good out of evil, will He
not surely do so for those who have given themselves unreservedly to Him?