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Our knowledge is piecemeal. When our will and action build on it alone, they cannot achieve a perfect structure. Nor can that knowledge, because it does not have complete power over the self and often collapses before reaching the goal. And so this inner shaping power that is in bondage strains toward a light that will guide more surely, and a power that will free it and give it space. This is the light and the power of divine grace.

Finally, misguided joy in their own works "makes them incapable of taking counsel and of receiving reasonable instructions" about what they ought to do. "Such souls become very slack in charity toward God and neighbor for the self-love contained in their works makes them grow cold in charity."

quoting St. John of the Cross

There You will show me
What my soul has been seeking,
And then You will give me,
You, my Life, will give me there
What You gave me on that other day:

The breathing of the air,
The song of the sweet nightingale,
The grove and its living beauty
In the serene night,
With a flame that is consuming and painless.

What does it matter if I fall at every moment! In that way I realize my weakness, and the gain is considerable. My God, You see how little I am good for, away from Your divine arms; and if You leave me alone, well, it is because it pleases You to see me lie on the ground. Then why should I be troubled?

The highest perfection obviously does not consist in interior delights or in great raptures or in visions or in the spirit of prophecy but in having our will so much in conformity with God's will that there is nothing we know He wills that we do not want with all our desire, and in accepting the bitter as happily as we do the delightful when we know that His Majesty desires it. This seems most difficult (not the doing of it, but this being content with what completely contradicts our nature); and indeed it truly is difficult. But love has this strength if it is perfect, for we forget about pleasing ourselves in order to please the one we love.

God came to redeem us, to unite us to himself, with one another, and to conform our will to his. He knows our nature; he takes it into consideration and therefore he has given us everything which can help us to reach our goal.

Since He is always with me, prayer, the heart to heart exchange, should never end...I think that we must be so simple with God!

I have understood that the thing that separates me most from God is my pride. I propose to be humble. Without humility the other virtues are hypocrisy. ... Humility gains us similarity to Christ, peace of soul, holiness and intimate union with God.

What is there for you to fear if God has promised to hear us each time we have recourse to Him?

O Jesus! how happy I would be if I had been faithful, but alas! often in the evening I am sad because I feel I could have corresponded better with your graces... If I were more united to You, more charitable with my sisters, more humble and more mortified, I would feel less sorrow when I talk with you in prayer. And yet, O my God, very far from becoming discouraged at the sight of my miseries, I come to you with confidence, recalling that "those who are well do not need a doctor but the sick do."

It is clear, then, that for the soul to come to unite itself perfectly with God through love and will, it must first be free from all desire of the will, howsoever slight. That is, that it must not intentionally and knowingly consent with the will to imperfections, and it must have power and liberty to be able not so to consent intentionally.

My father was fond of reading good books...These good books together with the care my mother took to have us pray and be devoted to out Lady and to some of the saints began to awaken me.