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My prayer almost always consists of an intimate conversation with Our Lord. I imagine that like Magdalene I am at His feet, listening to Him. He tells me what I must do to please Him.

Let us quicken our faith by constant communing with Him. Let us live with God as with a friend. That is how saints are made. We carry our heaven about within us, since He who satisfies the glorified soul in the light of vision gives Himself to us in faith.

Jesus works miracles for His dearest friends only after He has tested their faith. He let Lazarus die, even though Martha and Mary sent word that he was sick. But after the trial, what rewards! Lazarus rises from the dead.

Perhaps we do not know what love is: it would not surprise me a great deal to learn this, for love consists, not in the extent of our happiness, but in the firmness of our determination to try to please God in everything, and to endeavor, in all possible ways, not to offend Him, and to pray Him ever to advance the honor and glory of His Son and the growth of the Catholic Church. Those are the signs of love; do not imagine that the important thing is never to be thinking of anything else and that if your mind becomes slightly distracted all is lost.

Nothing is accomplished without effort, wihtout struggle. In our better moments, we no longer shed tears over our own weaknesses or over those of others, but we recall what was interiorly said to St. Paul: My grace is sufficient for you; in union with me you can do all things.

Lay all your cares about the future trustingly in God's hands, and let yourself be guided by the Lord just like a little child...

A love of pleasure, and attachment to it, usually fires the will toward enjoyment of things that give pleasure. A more intense enkindling of another, better love (love of the soul's Bridegroom) is necessary for the vanquishing of the appetites and the denial of this pleasure. By finding satisfaction and strength in this love, it will have the courage and constancy to readily deny all other appetites.

Take God for your spouse and friend and walk with him continually, and you will not sin and will learn to love, and the things you must do will work out prosperously for you.

If individuals resolutely submit to carrying the cross, if they decidedly want to find and endure trial in all things for God, they will discover in all of them great relief and sweetness.

My Jesus, pardon me. I am so proud that I do not know how to accept with humility the slightest humiliation. Dear Jesus, teach me humility and send me humiliations, even though I am unworthy of them.

I already told you elsewhere that sometimes the devil gives us great desires so that we will avoid setting ourselves to the task at hand, serving our Lord in possible things, and instead be content with having desired the impossible. Apart from the fact that by prayer you will be helping greatly, you need not be desiring to benefit the whole world but must concentrate on those who are in your company, and thus your deed will be greater since you are more obliged toward them.

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, nor the Canaanite woman was dead to the world when she found him.