(The following various passages are quoted from The Gift of Oneself by Father Joseph Schryvers C.S.S.R. Pg. 63 and 138-140.)
Whoever wishes to love God must have courage to forget self and to be surrendered to Him without calculating the cost, without reservation.
The soul that has given herself no longer belongs to herself. In her own eyes she is consecrated. She no longer has any interests save those of the Master.
To forget oneself – this is, therefore, the great law of the whole spiritual life.
To forget oneself is to exclude from one’s actions, sufferings and prayers all human calculations, all reservations for self-love, all egotistic intention.
To forget oneself is to accept simply from the hand of God, all crosses, all contradictions, without complaint, without examining their duration, their nature, regarding them as if they concerned someone else.
To forget oneself is to be moderate in seeking personal satisfactions, avoiding those that are unlawful and choosing only those which Providence offers.
To forget oneself is to estimate self at its just value, that is to say, a sinful nothingness; it is to turn one’s attention and the attention of others away from one’s own person, qualities and work; it is to avoid an anxious and unduly prolonged search into one’s own weaknesses.
To forget oneself is to disappear from one’s own sight by an act of the will and nevermore to find, in self or in others, in persons or in things, aught save Jesus and His Holy Will.
