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I have not known anyone truly devoted to him (St. Joseph) and rendering him special services who has not advanced more in virtue. For in a powerful way he benefits souls who recommend themselves to him.

Never mind whether you are all aglow or whether you are downcast; it is the law of our exile to pass thus from one state to the other; believe that He never changes and that in His loving kindness He is ever bending down to you to carry you away and establish you in Himself.

I understand clearly that through love alone can we become pleasing to God, and my sole ambition is to acquire it.

Believe, daughter, that My Father gives greater trials to anyone whom He loves more; and love responds to these. How can I show you greater love than by desiring for you what I have desired for Myself? Behold these wounds, for your sufferings have never reached this point. Suffering is the way of truth.

Finally, misguided joy in their own works "makes them incapable of taking counsel and of receiving reasonable instructions" about what they ought to do. "Such souls become very slack in charity toward God and neighbor for the self-love contained in their works makes them grow cold in charity."

quoting St. John of the Cross

Our created essence cries out to rejoin its Principle. The Word, the Splendour of the Father, is the eternal prototype on which creatures are designed on the day of their creation. That is why God wills that, having been freed from what is purely of self, we shall stretch out our arms … and possess Him …this contemplation opens up to the soul prospects before unhoped for.

Those who walk in the love of God seek neither their own gain nor their reward, but only to lose all things and themselves for God; and this loss they judge to be their gain.

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 troubling him.

Int. Castle, 2nd mansion

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.

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, it is easy to bear, this is certain.

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.

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 you and that You will not fail to give.