If a person is not quite blind, that person often refuses to be led by a guide. Since he sees a little, he thinks it is best to go in whatever direction he can distinguish because he sees no better direction. So he can lead astray a guide who sees…
I saw an angel appear in bodily form close by my left side …. He was not large, but small, and extremely beautiful,” Teresa wrote. “His face was aflame with fire so much that he appeared to be one of the highest ranks of angels, those that we call seraphim…
True poverty of spirit…means being at rest in labors and dryness and not seeking consolation or comfort in prayer…but seeking consolation in trials for love of Him who always lived in the midst of them. – St. Teresa of Avila
We ought to receive everything as coming directly from our Father’s divine hand, who loves us and who, in all our trials, is working out His own end end — that of uniting us more closely to Himself. Launch your soul upon the sea of courage and holy abandonment to…
If I ask You to free me from a trial, and the purpose of that trial is my mortification, what is it that I’m asking for, my God? – St. Teresa of Avila
The hours of adoration before the Highest Good and the listening for the voice of the Eucharistic God are simultaneously “meditation on the Law of the Lord” and “watching in prayer.” But the highest level is reached “when the Law is deep within our hearts” (Ps 40:8), when we are…
Work, especially great work, is a burden and a pain, a suffering precisely because intense activity cannot fail to generate in us that disagreeable phenomenon that is called fatigue, which eventually degenerates into depression or prostration or some other form of real and actual suffering. This painful aspect of work…
O Consuming Fire, Spirit of Love, descend into my soul and make all in me as an incarnation of the Word, that I may be to Him a super-added humanity wherein He renews His mystery; and You O Father, bestow Yourself and bend down to Your little creature, seeing in…
When I think that previously I was envious of Mary Magdalene for having had Jesus in her home so many times, for having listened to Him, I become ashamed; for He did not abandon our earth. He remains in the tabernacle. There I look at Him in faith and listen…
I am content to sacrifice during my life all joyful thought of the home which awaits me. -St. Therese