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How people delude themselves as to the real meaning of union with God! There are those who think they have reached it because they enjoy sensible consolations; they make one think of children playing with ashes which the wind blows away. No. no! True union lies not in enjoyment, but in self-abnegation.

This is the measure of the holiness of the children of God: to be holy as God, to be holy with the holiness of God: and we do this by living close to Him in the depths of the bottomless abyss within.

Let us live with God as with a Friend. Let us make our faith a living thing, so as to remain in communion with Him through everything. That is how saints are made.

There is a Being who is Love and who desires to have us live with Him. Oh! It is delightful! He is there, keeping me company, helping me to suffer, making me rise above my suffering to rest in Him. Do as I do, and you will see how everything becomes transformed.

...you have only to stay close to the crucified and your suffering is the best prayer.

When Jesus made in me His dwelling place,
When God took possession of my heart,
So well that since that hour,
Since that mysterious colloquy,
That divine and delicious meeting,
I have aspired to nothing else but to give my life
In order to return a bit of His great love
To the Beloved of the Eucharist
Who reposed in my feeble heart,
Inundating it with all of his favors.

Since our Lord dwells in our souls, His prayer is ours.

How serious life is: each minute is given us in order to "root" us deeper in God, as Saint Paul says, so the resemblance to our divine Model may be more striking, the union more intimate. But to accomplish this plan, which is that of God Himself, here is the secret: forget self, give up self, ignore self, look at the Master, look only at Him, accept as coming directly from His love both joy and suffering...

(My God) What a joyous mystery is your presence within me, in that intimate sanctuary of my soul where I can always find you, even when I do not feel your presence. Of what importance is feeling? Perhaps you are all the closer when I feel you less.

...my prayer is quite powerless, but I possess within me the Holy One of God, the Great Supplicant, and that is the prayer I am offering...

...I imagine her passing by, so beautiful, so calm and so majestic, so absorbed in recollection of the Word of God within her. Like Him, her prayer was always this: "Ecce. Here I am." Who? "The servant of the Lord," the lowliest of His creatures: she, His Mother! Her humility was so real, for she was always forgetful of self, free from all anxiety.

Think how Our Lady must have felt when, after the Incarnation, she possessed within her the Incarnate Word, the gift of God! In what depths of silence, of recollection, of adoration, she must have lived in the centre of her soul, in order to embrace that God whose Mother she was! He is in us. Let us keep close to Him in that silence, that love of the Virgin Mother.