Yet, as is evident through experience, souls who will pass on to so happy and lofty a state as is the union of love must usually remain in these aridities and temptations for a long while no matter how quickly God leads them. – St. John of the Cross
Let your desire be to see God; your fear lest you lose Him; your joy in that which will take you to Him, and thus shall you live in great peace. – St. Teresa of Avila
Love is nourished only by sacrifices, and the more a soul refuses natural satisfactions, the stronger and more disinterested becomes her tenderness. – St. Therese
I understood that each person is free to respond to the call of Jesus, to do little or much for Him, to select among the sacrifices He asks. Then I cried out: “My God, I choose ALL!” -St. Therese
God communicates Himself to the soul in this interior union with a love so intense that the love of a mother who tenderly caresses her child, the love of a brother or the affection of a friend bears no resemblance to it. -St. John of the Cross
One day after receiving Communion, it seemed most clear to me that Our Lord sat beside me; He told me that immediately after His resurrection He went to see our Lady because she then had great need and that the pain she experienced so absorbed and transpierced her soul that…
Simple faith is necessary in seeking God. In outward things, light helps to prevent one from falling; but in the things of God just the opposite is true: it is better for the soul not to see if it is to be more secure. – St. John of the Cross
Things were in God’s plan which I had not planned at all. I am coming to the living faith and conviction that – from God’s point of view – there is no chance, and that the whole of my life, down to every detail, has been mapped out in God’s…
Nothing so pleases Him as to see those souls developing and nothing can raise them so high as to become, in some way, equal with God. That is why He asks of the soul the tribute of its love, since it is the property of love to equalize, as far…
The very pure spirit does not bother about the regard of others or human respect, but communes inwardly with God, alone and in solitude as to all forms, and with delightful tranquility, for the knowledge of God is received in divine silence. – St. John of the Cross