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I know I am being sustained and herein lies my tranquility and security- not the conscious security of the man who is on firm ground with his own strength, but the sweet and beautiful security of a child upheld by a strong arm- which in practice is a security not less reasonable. Could you call that child reasonable who would live in constant fear that its mother would let it fall?

It is also an evident truth that sympathy with the neighbor grows the more the soul is united with God through love.

The work of salvation takes place in obscurity and stillness. In the heart’s quiet dialogue with God the living building blocks out of which the kingdom of God grows are prepared, the chosen instruments for the construction forged.

If God tells me through the prophets He is a faithful God, like a father and mother for me, that He is absolutely Love itself, then I ought to admit that my confidence in the arm that upholds me is reasonable, and that on the contrary, fear of falling into nothingness is foolish, unless I myself am the one who draws away from the arm that supports me.

Prayer is looking up into the face of the Eternal. We can do this only when the spirit is awake in its innermost depths,
freed from all earthly occupations and pleasures that benumb it. Being awake in body does not guarantee this consciousness,
nor does rest required by nature interfere.

More effective than the mortification one practices according to one's own choice is the cross that God lays upon one, exteriorly and interiorly.

Things were in God's plan which I had not planned at all. I am coming to the living faith and conviction that - from God's point of view - there is no chance, and that the whole of my life, down to every detail, has been mapped out in God's divine providence and makes complete and perfect sense in God's all-seeing eyes.

Our work in the midst of others will be efficacious and blessed by God only if we do not yield even one centimeter of the sure ground of our faith, and if we follow our conscience without letting ourselves be influenced by human respect.

Faith in the secret history of souls ought to fortify us when what we see externally (in ourselves and in others) takes away our courage.

Through every sincere prayer something happens in the church, and it is the church itself that is praying therein, for it is the Holy Spirit living in the church that intercedes for every individual soul "with sighs too deep for words." This is exactly what "authentic" prayer is, for "no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit." What could the prayer of the church be, if not great lovers giving themselves to God who is love!

Once an individual is drawn into God's orbit, withdrawing into his own interior and surrendering himself to Him in loving union, he has forever resolved the problem. It suffices that he allow himself to be directed and guided by the Spirit of God- who henceforth moves him noticeably - because he has always and everywhere the certainty of acting rightly.

Only in union with the divine Head does human suffering take on expiatory power. To suffer and to be happy although suffering, to have one's feet on the earth, to walk on the dirty and rough paths of this earth and yet to be enthroned with Christ at the Father's right hand, to laugh and cry with the children of this world and ceaselessly to sing the praises of God with the choirs of angels. This is the life of the Christian until the morning of eternity breaks forth.