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There is no more urgent need than total surrender to God, putting oneself totally in his hands....If man were deeply penetrated by this truth, he would be totally absorbed in God.

We live too much our own individual lives and think much too little of how we are united with each other in and through God and all together with God. And yet therein lies our supreme worth and strength, our dignity.

We live in a world in which love is condemned: it is called weakness, something to be overcome. Some say: never mind love, develop your strengths; let everyone be as strong as possible; let the weak perish ... [But] we shall not give up on love.

Stay with me, Jesus, my delight, Your presence near makes all things right.

Suffering is the way to heaven. In the cross is salvation, in the cross is victory. God willed it so. He Himself assumed the obligation of suffering in view of the glory of redemption. St. Paul makes it clear to us how all the disasters of this earthly life are insignificant, how they must be considered as nothing and passing, in comparison with the glory that will be revealed to us when the time of suffering is past and we come to share in God's glory.

Look upwards. There is a Father up there who is looking out for us.

More courage I will need for sure,
But any pain will I endure,
Because it makes me like to you
And leads unto your kingdom too.

Just as the Prophet did not hear the voice of God in the storm, but in the gentle breeze, so the heart of the spiritual person must not be shaken by the storm, but must listen for God's voice in the silence of its own interior.

Nothing is accomplished without effort, wihtout struggle. In our better moments, we no longer shed tears over our own weaknesses or over those of others, but we recall what was interiorly said to St. Paul: My grace is sufficient for you; in union with me you can do all things.

Knowing, O my God, that my sins made Your cross so heavy that You had to sink beneath it, this makes me even more convinced that I must carry my cross together with You and that I should not shy away from it, even should I sink beneath its weight.

We object when He hands us the chalice of His suffering. It is so difficult for us to resign ourselves to suffering. To rejoice in it strikes us as heroic. What is the value of our offering of self if we unite ourselves each morning only in word and gesture, rather than in thought and will, to that offering which we, together with the Church, make of Him with whom we are in the one body?

Do as perfectly as you can the tasks of your everyday life, even the most trivial. It is quite simple. Follow Our Lord like a little child. I skip after him as best I can. I put my trust in him and abandon all care.