Detachment in practice

When Giovanni Pietro Caraffa became Pope Paul IV in 1555, St Ignatius Loyola was deeply worried. Caraffa had not been sympathetic to the Jesuits and there was a danger that he would change some elements that St Ignatius regarded as essential. Nevertheless, St Ignatius said:
If this misfortune were to fall upon me, provided it happened without any fault of mine, even if the Society were to melt away like salt in water, I believe that a quarter of an hour's recollection in God would be sufficient to console me and to reestablish peace within me.
This spirit of detachment became a characteristic part of the ascetical teaching of the Jesuits.

The French Jesuit spiritual writer, Fr Jean Nicholas Grou (1731-1803), would have been happy to remain in Paris after the French Revolution, to minister in secret, but was persuaded to seek refuge in England. In addition to the works which we have ("Spiritual Maxims", "How to Pray", "Manual for Interior Souls" ...) he also spent fourteen years of research on another work. He gave the manuscripts of the work to a lady who was arrested during the Reign of Terror. Her servants, fearing that the possession of them would compromise her, burnt them. After settling in England, he heard of the loss of this work. Calmly and simply, he said:
If God had wished to derive any glory from this work, He would have preserved it.
I found this gem in the "Short Account of the Abbé Grou" included at the start of my 1892 edition of his "Manual for Interior Souls" which I have just started reading.

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