To Whom Shall We Go - St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort

Those who follow the world, on the contrary, urge each other to continue in their evil ways without scruple, calling to one another day after day, "Let us eat and drink, sing and dance and enjoy ourselves. God is good; he has not made us to damn us. He does not forbid us to amuse ourselves. We shall not be damned for so little. We are not to be scrupulous. No, you will not die."

Dear brothers and sisters, remember that our loving Savior has his eyes on you at this moment, and he says to each one of you individually, "See how almost everyone deserts me on the royal road of the cross. Pagans in their blindness ridicule my cross as foolishness; obstinate Jews are repelled by it as by an object of horror; heretics pull it down and break it to pieces as something contemptable.

"Even my own people - and I say this with tears in my eyes and grief in my heart - my own children whom I have brought up and instructed in my ways, my members whom I have quickened with my own spirit, have turned their backs on me and forsaken me by becoming enemies of my cross. 'Will you also go away?' Will you also desert me by running away from my cross like the worldlings, who thus become so many antichrists? Will you also follow the world, despise the poverty of my cross, in order to seek after wealth; shun the sufferings of my cross, to look for enjoyment; avoid the humiliations of my cross in order to chase after the honors of the world? 'There are many who pretend they are friends of mine and protest that they love me, but in their hearts they hate me. I have many friends of my table, but very few of my cross.'"

St. Louis Marie Grignion de Montfort - 1673-1716

Portrait of St. Louis Marie painted shortly after his death, preserved at Saint Laurent-sur-Sèvre