Carlo Giuseppe Quadrupani - How to Love God & Keep His Commandments

How to Love God and
Keep His Commandments

The cover art is The Old Testament Trinity,
a fifteenth-century icon by the Russian
iconographer Andrei Rublev. It depicts
Abrahams encounter with God in the form of
three angels (Genesis 18-19), who represent
the Three Persons of the Trinity.

How to Love God and Keep His Commandments is an abridged edition of Light and Peace, published in 1912 by B. Herder, St. Louis, Missouri. This 1999 edition by Sophia Institute Press contains minor editorial revisions to the original text and replaces the introduction in the 1912 edition with the original concluding paragraphs from that edition.

Copyright 1999 Sophia Institute Press

Printed in the United States of America

Jacket design by Lorraine Bilodeau

On the cover: Andrei Rublevs icon The Old Testament Trinity, Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia (photo courtesy of Scala/Art Resource, New York).

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

Sophia Institute Press

Box 5284, Manchester, NH 03108

1-800-888-9344

www.sophiainstitute.com

Nihil obstat: F. G. Holweck, Censor Librorum

Imprimatur: John J. Glennon, Archbishop of St. Louis

June 11, 1904

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Quadrupani, Carlo Giuseppe.

[Selections. English]

How to love God and keep His commandments / Charles Joseph Quadrupani.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-928832-02-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Christian life Catholic authors. I. Title.

99 00 01 02 03 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contents

These instructions were written in 1795 by the illustrious and saintly Barnabite Father Quadrupani. They contain a summary of spiritual guidance for earnest Christians in the ordinary duties of life in the world. The author had formed his own spirituality on the model presented by the life and teaching of St. Francis de Sales, and in this little book, he reflects the wisdom, prudence, and sweetness of that gentleman saint.

The work has passed through uncounted editions in its original Italian and through a large number of editions in both the French and the German translations. The authors teaching is decidedly practical and practicable, and appeals in every way to the common sense and fits in with the busy, matter-of-fact life of the average Catholic.

The present translation has been made from the twentieth French edition and has been collated with the thirty-second edition of the original Italian published at Naples in 1818.

I. M. OR
Overbrook, Pennsylvania

The writer of these instructions makes no pretension to have derived them from his own wisdom. The material was furnished by the greatest saints and the most eminent Doctors of the Church. You can therefore believe in them with great confidence, follow them without fear, and adopt them as a safe and reliable guide in your spiritual life.

If you try to regulate your practice by making personal and indiscriminate application of everything you find in sermons and books, you will never be at rest. One draws you to the right, the other to the left, says St. Francis de Sales; doctrine is one, but its applications are many, and they vary according to time, place, and person.

Besides, those who speak to a hardened multitude, from whom they cannot get even a little without exacting a great deal, insist vehemently upon the subject with which they wish to impress their hearers and, for the time being, appear to forget everything else. If they preach on mortification of the senses, fasting, or any other penitential work, they fail to explain the proper manner of practicing it, the limits that should not usually be exceeded, and the circumstances under which we can and should refrain from it. This is due to the fact that the cowardly and the lukewarm, whom it is more necessary to excite than to restrain, will take from these instructions only just what is suitable for them. Now, as these form the majority, it is for them above all that it is necessary to speak.

It would then be better for you individually, without lessening your respect and esteem for books of devotion and for preachers animated by the spirit of God, to confine yourself as far as practice is concerned to the advice of your spiritual director and to the teachings of the saints as presented in this little volume.

St. Francis de Sales counsels you to select your spiritual director carefully and to allow yourself subsequently to be entirely directed by him, as though he were an angel come down from Heaven to conduct you there.

Now, in observing these instructions, you will have for spiritual guide and director not the poor sinner who has compiled them for the glory of God and the good of souls, but St. Augustine, and especially St. Francis de Sales, in whom the Church recognizes and admires such exalted sanctity, profound wisdom, and rare experience in the direction of souls. These are the three eminent qualities requisite to constitute a great Doctor in the Catholic Church and to form the safest and most enlightened guide for those who wish to be his disciples.

How to Love God and
Keep His Commandments

Editors note: The biblical quotations in these pages are based on the Douay-Rheims edition of the Old and New Testaments. Where applicable, biblical quotations have been cross-referenced with the differing names and numeration in the Revised Standard Version, using the following symbol: (RSV =).

My brethren, count it all joy
when you shall fall into diverse temptations.
James 1:2

Now, if I do that which I will not,
it is no more I that do it, but sin
that dwelleth in me.
Romans 7:20

If we are tempted, says the Holy Spirit, it is a sign that God loves us. Those whom God best loves have been most exposed to temptations. Because thou wast acceptable to God, said the angel to Tobias, it was necessary that temptation should prove thee.

Do not ask God to deliver you from temptations, but to grant you the grace not to succumb to them and to do nothing contrary to His divine will. He who refuses the combat renounces the crown. Place all your trust in God, and God will Himself do battle for you against the enemy.