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If I look at things from an earthly standpoint I see loneliness and even emptiness, for I cannot say that my heart has not suffered; but if I keep my eyes fixed upon Him, my shining Star, then all the rest vanishes and I lose myself as a drop of water in the ocean. All is calm, all is soothed and all is so good; it is the peace of God of which St Paul speaks, the peace that ‘surpasseth all understanding.’

To prove to Our Lord how much you love Him, learn to forget yourself always ... and be very faithful to all your duties and all your resolutions. Live by will rather than by imagination. If you feel your weakness, God wants you to make use of it in order to make acts of the will which you will offer Him as so many acts of love ... He so loves you and He so wants you for His own, whatever may be the path whereby you must follow Him here below.

Oh, if you knew how necessary suffering is so God's work can be done in the soul...

‘You are dead and your life is hidden with Christ in God’ (Col. 3:3). There is the condition: we must be ‘dead’, otherwise we may be hidden in God sometimes, but we do not live habitually in Him; for all our sensitiveness, our self-seeking and such-like, causes us to depart from Him.

Oh, if you knew how necessary suffering is so God's work can be done in the soul...

We must enter continually more deeply into the Divine Being by means of recollection. ‘I press on’ cried St Paul (Phil. 3:14). Thus, every day we must go down deeper along the path of the abyss that is God, letting ourselves slide down the slope in a confidence that is full of love.

It is by the Blood of the cross that He will make peace in my little heaven, so that it may truly be the repose of the Three. He will fill me with Himself; He will bury me with Him; He will make me live again with Him, by His life.

There is no wood like that of the cross for lighting the fire of love in the soul! And Jesus needs to be loved and to find in the world, where He is so offended, souls that are given, wholly surrendered to Him and His good pleasure!

In what peace, in what recollection Mary lent herself to everything she did! How even the most trivial things were divinized by her! For through it all the Virgin remained the adorer of the gift of God! This did not prevent her from spending herself outwardly when it was a matter of charity.

All passes! In the evening of life, love alone abides ... all must be for love, one must without ceasing, forget oneself ... Oh, if only I had always done so!

Oh, then, when everything was dark, when the present was so painful and the future seemed even more gloomy to me, I closed my eyes and abandoned myself like a child in the arms of this Heavenly Father... We look at ourselves too much, we want to see and understand, we do not have enough confidence in Him who envelops us in His love.

St. Augustine says we have two cities within us, the city of God and the city of Me. To the extent that the first increases, the second will be destroyed.