When you are burdened you are close to God, your strength, who abides with the afflicted. When you are relieved of the burden you are close to yourself, your own weakness; for virtue and strength of soul grow and are confirmed in the trials of patience. – St. John of…
Here there is no more to do than surrender our intellects and reflect that they are of no avail when it comes to understanding the grandeurs of God. -St. Teresa of Avila
The soul should firmly resolve never to submit to defeat, for if the devil sees it staunchly determined to lose life and comfort and all that he can offer, rather than return to the first mansion, he will the sooner leave it alone. -St. Teresa of Avila
The soul that is quick to turn to speaking and conversing is slow to turn to God. – St. John of the Cross
Let nothing disturb you, be it good or bad. Give up everything else except your peace of mind. When you feel restless, sad, sorrowful and embittered, look for the cause, and if it is not worth being sorry about (and nothing that does not offend God is worth being sorry…
It is not the soul that makes the progress, but it is Christ, who carries her as a child is carried. -Bl. Mary of Jesus of Toledo, OCD
God deliver us from spiritual people who are so spiritual that they want to turn everything into perfect contemplation, come what may. It would be a bad business for us if we could not seek God until we were dead to the world. Neither Magdalene, nor the woman of Samaria,…
To what a height of glory we are called! I understand that silence, the recollection of the saints, who could no longer emerge from their contemplation. The good God led them to the summit of the mountain, where union between Himself and the soul that has become His bride is…
After God places these three last kinds of good in the soul, he no longer remembers her former ugliness and sin, as he declares through Ezekiel [Ez. 18:22], for on account of these goods she is very agreeable to him. And once he has blotted out this sin and ugliness,…
All passes! In the evening of life, love alone abides … all must be for love, one must without ceasing, forget oneself … Oh, if only I had always done so! – St. Elizabeth of the Trinity