Let him have a fixed determination not to allow himself to be beaten, for, if the devil sees that he has firmly resolved to lose his life and his peace and everything that he can offer him rather than to return to the first room, he will very soon cease…
Many of these beginners will make numerous plans and great resolutions, but since they are not humble and have no distrust of themselves, the more resolves they make the more they break, and the greater becomes their anger. – St. John of the Cross
They are too attached to their honor. . . . These souls, for the most part, grieve over anything said against them. They do not embrace the cross but drag it along, and so it hurts and wearies them and breaks them to pieces. However, if the cross is loved,…
To obtain an answer to the requests we bear in our hearts, there is no better means than to concentrate the strength of our prayer upon what is more pleasing to God. – St. John of the Cross
Would it be better, perhaps, to keep still about my needs, hoping You will provide the remedy for them? Certainly not; for You, my Lord and my delight, knowing the many needs there must be and the comfort it is for us to rely on You, tell us to ask…
When things that are irritable or disagreeable befall me, instead of assuming an air of sadness, I respond by a smile. At first I was not always successful, but now it is a habit which I am very happy to have acquired. – St. Therese
Oh, what a good friend You make, my Lord! How You proceed by favoring and enduring. You wait for others to adapt to Your nature, and in the meanwhile You put up with theirs! – St. Teresa of Avila
We must sweeten our minds by charitable thoughts. After that, the practice of patience will become almost natural. – St. Therese
Faith is obscure knowledge; it thus leads us to knowledge of something, but this something we do not get to see. This is the reason why it must also be said that the end we attain by way of faith is also itself a night: God, even in ecstatic union,…
It is clear, then, that for the soul to come to unite itself perfectly with God through love and will, it must first be free from all desire of the will, howsoever slight. That is, that it must not intentionally and knowingly consent with the will to imperfections, and it…