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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.

Let us live in close union with our Beloved and be wholly given to Him as He is given to us ... commune with Him all the day long, since He is living in your soul ... there you have the whole of the Carmelite life, to live in Him ... in everything that happens the soul sees Him whom it loves and everything leads it to Him. Cherish silence and prayer for they are the essence of our life. Ask the Queen of Carmel, our Mother, to teach you to adore Our Lord in deep recollection ... pray also to our seraphic Mother, St Teresa. She loved Our Lord so ... ask her to obtain for you her passionate love of souls, for the Carmelite must be apostolic.

I'm keeping a rendezvous with you in the shadow of the Cross to learn the science of suffering.

There is so much to make reparation for, so much to ask, that I believe to fulfill such needs one must become a continual prayer, one must love much. The power of a soul given to love is so wonderful as we see from the beautiful example of St Mary Magdalen; one word was enough for her to obtain the resurrection of Lazarus.

During these painful times when you feel a terrible void, think how He is enlarging the capacity of your soul so that it can receive Him, making it, as it were, infinite just as He is infinite. So, as far as your will is concerned, try to remain perfectly joyous beneath the hand that is crucifying you ... look upon each pain as a token of love coming to you directly from God, in order that He may unite you to Him.

There are two words that sum up for me all holiness, all aspotolate: "Union and Love."

Since we are all members of one body, inasmuch as we have an abundance of divine life, we can communicate it in the great body of the Church.

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 world or difficulties from within, since far from being a hindrance, these things only root it more firmly in its love for its Master.

It seems to me that the weakest soul, even the one that is most blameworthy, is the one that has the best grounds for hope. By forgetting itself and throwing itself into the arms of God, it glorifies Him and gives Him more joy than by all its falling back upon self, and all the self-examination that makes it live within its infirmities, while all the time it possesses at the centre of itself a Saviour who wills to purify it every moment.

Always love prayer, and when I say prayer, I don't mean so much imposing on yourself a lot of vocal prayers to be recited every day, as much as that elevation of the soul towards God through all things that establishes us in a kind of continual communion with the Holy Trinity by quite simply doing everything in Their presence.

The more you feel your weakness, your difficulty in being recollected, the more the Master seems to hide Himself, the more you should rejoice, for then you are giving Him something, and is it not better to give than to receive, when one loves?

A Praise of Glory is a soul ever gazing upon God in faith and simplicity. It reflects all that He is; it is like a fathomless abyss into which He may flow and overflow; it is also like a crystal through which He can shine and behold His perfections and His own splendor. A soul that thus allows the Divine Being to satisfy in it His need to communicate all that He is and all that He has, is truly the Praise of Glory.