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I cannot say this without tears and great joy of soul! How You desire, Lord, thus to be with us and to be present in the [Blessed] Sacrament ... You would be glad to be with us since You say that Your delight is to be with children of the earth.

God calls to us in countless little ways all the time. Through illnesses and suffering and through sorrow he calls to us. Through a truth glimpsed fleetingly in a state of prayer he calls to us. No matter how halfhearted such insights may be, God rejoices whenever we learn what he is trying to teach us.

Sometimes … after receiving Communion I was at peace. And sometimes, in approaching the Sacrament, I felt at once so good in soul and body that I was surprised. It seems that in only a moment all the darknesses of the soul disperse.

Let your desire be to see God; your fear lest you lose Him; your joy in that which will take you to Him, and thus shall you live in great peace.

Here, however, the understanding being more vigilant and the powers more on the alert, we cannot avoid hearing the fighting and cannonading around us. For now the devils set on us the reptiles, that is to say, thoughts about the world and its joys which they picture as unending; they remind us of the high esteem men held us in, of our friends and relations; they tell us how the penances which souls in this mansion always begin to wish to perform would injure our health: in fine, the evil spirits place a thousand impediments in the way.

I cannot believe that one who has approached so near to Mercy Himself, Who has shown the soul what it really is and all that God has pardoned it, would not instantly and most willingly forgive, and be at peace, and remain well-affected towards anyone who has injured her.

To have life is to live in such a way that there is no fear of death or of any of life's happenings, to have a habitual happiness...To what can the interior and exterior peace that you always enjoy be compared? It is in your power to live and to die with this peace.

Be convinced that where humility is truly present, God will give a peace and conformity — even though He may never give consolations — by which one will walk with greater contentment than will others with their consolations.

Let him have a fixed determination not to allow himself to be beaten, for, if the devil sees that he has firmly resolved to lose his life and his peace and everything that he can offer him rather than to return to the first room, he will very soon cease troubling him.

Turn your eyes upon yourself and look at yourself inwardly, as I have said. You will find your Master; He will not fail you: indeed, the less outward comfort you have, the [much] greater the joy He will give you. He is full of compassion and never fails those who are afflicted and out of favor if they trust in Him alone.

...we render God the most true and acceptable service by caring only for His honor and glory and forgetting ourselves, our advantages, comfort and happiness. How can we be self-oblivious, while keeping ourselves under such strict control that we are afraid to move, or even to think, or to leave our minds enough liberty to desire God's greater glory and to rejoice in the glory which He possesses? When His Majesty wishes the mind to rest from working He employs it in another manner, giving it a light and knowledge far above any obtainable by its own efforts and absorbing it entirely into Himself. Then, though it knows not how, it is filled with wisdom such as it could never gain for itself by striving to suspend the thoughts.

For now, his voice reaches us through words spoken by good people, through listening to spiritual talks, and reading sacred literature. God calls to us in countless little ways all the time. Through illnesses and suffering and through sorrow he calls to us. Through a truth glimpsed fleetingly in a state of prayer he calls to us. No matter how halfhearted such insights may be, God rejoices whenever we learn what he is trying to teach us.