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There is a vocation to suffer with Christ and thereby to cooperate in His redemptive work. If we are united to the Lord, we are members of the Mystical Body of Christ; Christ continues to live and to suffer in His members and the suffering borne in union with His is His suffering, integrated and made fruitful in His great redemptive work.

Only the person who renounces self-importance, who no longer struggles to defend or assert himself, can be large enough for God's boundless action.

To belong wholly to God, to give oneself to Him, to His service, for love, this is the vocation, not only of all the elect but of every Christian; whether consecrated or not, man or woman.

The pathway of the incarnate Son of God winds around the cross and suffering until it comes to the glory of the resurrection. And for each of us, for all humanity, the way is joined to that of the Son of God through suffering and death, to the glory of the resurrection.

In order to allow an entire human existence to be pervaded with divine life, it is not enough to kneel down once a year in front of the manger and allow oneself to be taken in by the spell of the Holy Night. One must be actively engaged with God one's entire life long, listen to the word which He spoke, which have been handed down to us, and then comply with these words. Above all, one must pray as the Savior himself has taught and so insistently emphasized again and again.

The Redemption was decided in the eternal silence of the divine life and in the hiddenness of the tranquil dwelling of Nazareth; the power of the Holy Spirit overshadowed the Virgin while she was praying alone, and it brought about the Incarnation of the Redeemer.

The cross...It is the path from earth to heaven. It will lift one who embraces it in faith, love, and hope into the bosom of the Trinity.

Contemplation is perceived more frequently in the will under the form of love, than in the intellect under the form of knowledge.

Then gradually, he becomes very small and humble; he grows patient and indulgent toward the splinter in strange eyes because the beam in his own is brought into being; and, finally, he also learns to be patient with himself in the inexorable light of the divine Presence and to surrender himself to the divine mercy which can take care of all that ridicules our energy.

One must pray much to remain faithful in every circumstance, above all for the many who have to go through trials more arduous than mine and are not so anchored to eternity.

It is not human activity that can save us, but the sufferings of Christ. To take part in these is my aspiration.

Faith furnishes a certain but obscure knowledge to the understanding.  In fact it shows us God as inaccessible light, as incomprehensible and infinite Being before whom every natural force gives way.  And it is just for this motive that faith reduces reason to its intrinsic nothingness: to the realization of its impotence and of the grandeur of God.