God is love, and love is goodness giving itself away. It is a fullness of being that does not want to remain enclosed in itself, but rather to share itself with others, to give itself to them and to make them happy. – St. Teresa Benedicta (Edith Stein)
That is not true virtue which does not suffer a real test through opposition. – St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi
The sum of perfection: forgetfulness of creation, remembrance of the creator, attention to what is within and to be loving the beloved. – St. John of the Cross
Let him never cease from prayer who has once begun it, be his life ever so wicked, for prayer is the way to amend it, and without prayer such amendment will be much more difficult. – St. Teresa of Avila
Remember that you have only one soul; that you have only one death to die; that you have only one life, which is short and has to be lived by you alone; and there is only one Glory, which is eternal. If you do this, there will be many things…
We must let ourselves be transformed into one and the same image with Him, and that, quite simply, by loving all the time. -St. Elizabeth of the Trinity
Just as the angels in heaven incessantly sing His praises, so does a Carmelite echo those praises here on earth, whether near to the tabernacle where God who is Love lives imprisoned, or in the intimate depths of her soul’s heaven, where faith tells her God dwells. Our vocation’s objective…
Love is swift, sincere, pious, pleasant and delightful; strong, patient, faithful, prudent, long-suffering, courageous, and never seeking itself: for where a man seeks himself, there he falls from love. -St. Therese
When the soul is so deeply rooted in Him, the divine sap flows freely through it, and everything that is imperfect, commonplace, unspiritual, is destroyed … the soul that is thus divested of itself and clothed with Jesus Christ, need no longer fear anything either from relations with the external…
We object when He hands us the chalice of His suffering. It is so difficult for us to resign ourselves to suffering. To rejoice in it strikes us as heroic. What is the value of our offering of self if we unite ourselves each morning only in word and gesture,…