Adelaide Coari

“Serve . Our century does not want us to be servants and truly the concept of fraternity and equality does not admit the servant. […] Serving God consists in doing the will of the “Father who is in heaven”. Doing God's will is following his law, which has a fundamentally unique voice for all individuals”

“The first condition, however, is this, to find the director who is a faithful friend. DC [Don Carlo Grugni] I would have obeyed, obeyed with all my soul. Because? Before I spoke, I felt heard by him, the expression of his soul in what lived most generously, they were the desires of my [sic]. We felt united in spirit, in thought of action. What was obedience in me then? If not my greatest and most intimate joy!”

“But approaching the thought, not feeling that every initial act should always have come from the authority of the Church, impersonating the authority of the Pope, was a sin . Who knows how much energy I wasted in this intimate fight! [...] I rebelled: I broke away violently, not without deep pain, great anguish. Yet then I obeyed . What is, my God, obedience to the Director?”

“I wanted to obey my Director, I subjected myself to all the trials; I wanted to help the spirit with mortification of the body, I led an intense life of thought, but I wasn't well; I was always in anguish, after an act of true submission, always the period of rebellion. [...] I was pining, his word weighed on me like the sword of Damocles, for how many years I fought between the idea of ​​submitting or looking for another confessor!”

“But why does St. Francis de Sales want obedience to the guide who is a faithful friend? Isn't it enough that I alone try to place myself in the eternal law? Alone?… My nature seeks help, it seeks it every day in brothers with whom it believes it feels in communion of ideas and affections. And I would be happy – how many times, my God, have I wished to find myself with such a spirit – if I could find in one of the priests I approach, the guiding friend.”