Resolutions Are Not Enough

Élisabeth Leseur’s atheist husband, Félix, discovered her journal after her death in 1914. Reading it lead to his eventual conversion.

September 21, 1899

How fine was the beginning of the Christian Church, recorded in the Acts of the Apostles! “And all they that believed were together, and had all things in common. Their possessions and goods they sold, and divided them to all, according as every one had need. And continuing daily with one accord in the Temple, and breaking bread from house to house, they took their meat with gladness and simplicity of heart; praising God, and having favor with all people” (Acts. 2:44–47).

“Having favor with all the people,” that is, with the little ones, the humble, those who believed as they did, and those who did not yet partake of their divine faith. The despised and hated people had soon found a way of “having favor with all the people.”

How many Christians nowadays could give themselves the same testimony? How many have in their hearts the evangelical flame that purifies and enlightens all that comes near it? Let us go back to the holy source, to the gospel, the word of God. Let us draw from it lessons of moral strength, heroic patience, tenderness for all creatures and for souls. Let us Christians be sure never to “break the bruised reed” nor to “quench the smoking flax” (Isa. 42:3). That reed is perhaps the mournful suffering soul of a brother; and the humble flax extinguished by our icy breath may be some noble spirit that we could have restored and uplifted. Let us beware: nothing is so delicate and so sacred as the human soul, nothing is so quickly bruised. Let each one of our words and deeds contain a principle of life that, penetrating other spirits, will communicate light and strength and will reveal God to them.

Claude Monet, San Giorgio Maggiore au crépuscule, oil on canvas, 1908.

September 25, 1899

No one knows what passes in the profound depths of our souls. To feel God near, to meditate, to pray, to gather all our deepest thoughts so as to reflect on them more deeply: that is to live the inner life, and this inner life is the supreme joy of life. But so many moving thoughts and ardent desires and generous resolutions should be translated into deeds, for we are in the midst of human life and a great task lies before us.

It is the time for painful effort: one must tear oneself asunder, forsake the realm of thought for that of reality, face action, know that one will either not be understood or be understood wrongly, and that one will perhaps suffer at the hands of humanity for having willed the good of humanity. We must already have drawn from God an incomparable strength and armed our hearts with patience and love, in order to undertake day by day and hour by hour the work that should belong to every Christian: the moral and material salvation of our brothers and sisters.

Source: Élisabeth Leseur, A Wife’s Story: The Journal of Élizabeth Leseur, second edition. (Burns, Oates & Washbourne, 1921), 44–45.