Chapter 16. The Impressions which should remain after this Exercise. (Part 5. Practices for Renewing and Confirming the Soul in Devotion) (Introduction to the Devout Life) (Saint Francis of Sales)

ON the day you make this renewal of your resolutions, and on those immediately following, you should often repeat with heart and voice the earnest words ofS.

Paul, S. Augustine, S. Catherine of Genoa, and others like-minded, "I am not mine own, whether I live or whether I die, I am the Lord's. There is no longer any me or mine, my 'me' is Jesus, my 'mine' is to be His. You world, wilt ever be yourself, and hitherto I have been myself, but henceforth I will be so no more." We shall indeed not be ourselves any more, for our heart will be changed, and the world which has so often deceived us will in its turn be deceived in us; our change will be so gradual that the world will still suppose us to be Esau, while really we are Jacob.

All our devout exercises must sink into the heart, and when we come forth from our meditation and retirement it behoves us to tread warily in business or society, lest the wine of our good resolutions be heedlessly spilt; rather let it soak in and penetrate every faculty of the soul, but quietly, and without bodily or mental excitement.