GUIDELINES  FOR  SALVATION

Practise this prescription given by a Catholic medical doctor for your spiritual and temporal well-being.  It consists of three words: calm, diet and joy.  These are three words taken from Holy Scripture, and those who follow this presciption live a really wholesome life.     

Everything has its own time.  Consequently, set your priorities according to their proper time.  Thus, during your examination of conscience, set yourself to it and leave out all other considerations: during prayer, pray; during meals, eat; during work, work; during study, study and so on.  If you keep this order, you will avoid all confusion.             

Humility is a rare virtue.  Seek it in God's grace and you will find it. Then you will enjoy the immense goodness of God.   Humility means that one loves God to the contempt of self.  Pride consists in this:  that one loves oneself to the contempt of God.            

Self love is the cause of every sin.  We love ourselves, and so we want to do what we like, whatever pleases our nature.  This is why we sin, because we do not want what God wills, and we want what God does not will.   

Pray God to give you the grace to relish Him, to be enchanted with His grandeur, His sweetness, His goodness.  Be delighted with Him, and then He will grant you every good wish of your heart, as is written:    'be delighted with the Lord and He will give you what your heart desires'.  

God is disgusted only with those who are proud, and does not use them, just as you, his image, would not use an instrument which is tainted.  It is written that God resists the proud and gives His grace to the humble.  Be humble, and you will find your good fortune with God.     

When anybody harms you in any way, or in time of adversity, look on it only as a disposition set by God.  Christ said, 'The chalice which my Father gave me should I not drink it?'  He did not mention the jealousy of the Jews, the greediness of Judas, the malice of Satan, none of this.    

In order to serve God, one must discern His will.  Now God reveals His will to us by means of the natural law, the precepts of the Church, our legitimate superiors, his inspirations and by life's circumstances.  Pray that He does not exclude you from His service.         

Have you ever considered what you are compared to God?  What you are compared to a vast multitude of people?  What you are in comparison to the vast sea or to the immense creation?  Now, compared to God, the entire universe is a speck of a seed. So, your very self is as nothing before Him.  Hold Him in awe and give Him honour.      

To sustain your faith, keep Sacred Scripture and Holy Tradition as your firm rule. In a word, hold on to the Catholic Church, whose head is the Pope, for the Church has been instituted infallible by Christ.  Even for your moral life, keep fearlessly to the Church as your guide.  It is in the Church that the saints lived and in it that they died.     

From the writings of St.George Preca, the Maltese Saint.