Blessed Benedict Joseph Labre said that to love God as we ought, it would be necessary to have three hearts in one. The first, all on fire for God, would cause us to think continually of God, speak habitually of Him, act constantly for Him, and support with patience, during the term of our life, the sorrows and trials which it may please Him to send us.
The second heart, all love for our neighbor, should cause us to help him in his temporal wants by our alms and still more in his spiritual needs by instruction, counsel, example, and prayer. This second heart should be above all full of tenderness for sinners; asking continually of God to enlighten and bring them to sorrow for sin; it should also be most compassionate toward the holy souls in Purgatory.
But the third heart should be hard as bronze toward self, shunning every kind of sensuality, resisting constantly all self-love, renouncing one's own will, chastising the body by fasting and abstinence, in fine putting to death all the inclinations of corrupt nature.
--
Reading with the Saints
