To be a good servant of God is not to be always consoled, always in sweetness, always without aversion or repugnance for virtue; if it were, then neither St. Paul, nor St. Angela, nor St. Catherine of Sienna, would have properly served God. To be a good servant of God is to be charitable towards our neighbour, to possess an inviolable resolution in the superior part of the soul to follow the will of God, to have such a profound humility and simplicity as will make us confide entirely in God and rise again when we fall, to endure patiently ourselves and our abjections, and to endure tranquilly our neighbours and their imperfections.
--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts
