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For on this road there is room only for self denial (as our Savior asserts) and the cross. The cross is a supporting staff and greatly lightens and eases the journey.

Yet, as is evident through experience, souls who will pass on to so happy and lofty a state as is the union of love must usually remain in these aridities and temptations for a long while no matter how quickly God leads them.

...Daughter, those who are strong soldiers God will try in darkness and emptiness concerning all things so they might be victorious in battle, for they know how to drink water from their hands while standing-not bending over to the ground.

Never fail to keep your heart at peace and in tender love, ready to suffer as things present themselves.

In savoring a finite joy

the very most one can expect

is to enfeeble and destroy

our taste, leaving the palate wrecked;

for all the sweetness there may be

I’ll never throw away my soul…

I desire your progress, but it strikes me that enough has already been said and written for the attainment of everything you need. If anything is lacking it is not writing and speaking, but in silence and work.

What God seeks, He being Himself God by nature, is to make us gods through participation, just as fire converts all things into fire.

Oh, then soul most beautiful among all creatures, so anxious to know the dwelling place of your Beloved so you may go in search of him and be united with him, now we are telling you that you yourself are his dwelling and his secret inner room and hiding place.

For Christ desire to enter into complete nakedness, emptiness and poverty in everything.

The fly that clings to honey hinders its flight, and the soul that allows itself attachment to spiritual sweetness hinders its own liberty and contemplation.

There is much to fathom in Christ, for He is like an abundant mine with many recesses of treasures, so that however deep people go they never reach the end ... but rather in every recess find new veins with new riches everywhere.

Before the divine fire is introduced into and united to the substance of the soul through a person's perfect and complete purgation and purity, its flame, which is the Holy Spirit, wounds it by destroying and consuming the imperfections of its bad habits. And this is the work of the Holy Spirit, in which He disposes it for the divine union and transformation in God through love.