With my mind dejected over too many things, I pray to receive light. And I am led to chapter 12 in the Letter to the Hebrews, and my spiritual strength really is bolstered, and my enthusiasm for “hearing” returns, for under the pressure of so many things I am brought to think, “I don’t want to do any more. Ordinary life, ordinary life at all costs.” But I know who “the One who speaks”739 is, and I see myself being observed by eyes of beseeching love. And I can no longer say, “I don’t want to.”
God is truly a fire devouring even the tendencies of our humanity when it has abandoned itself to Him. To Him who speaks, saying, “I will not leave you. I will not abandon you,” in full confidence I want to repeat again, “You are my help. I do not fear man. O God, do not disappoint my hope.”740
739 Hebrews 12:25.
740 We omit the passages connected with the episode involving “Peter’s First Meeting with the Messiah,” written on October 13 and 14, found in the cycle on The First Year of the Public Life.