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Since Jesus wants to sleep why will I hinder Him? I am only too happy that He doesn’t bother with me, for He is showing me that I am not a stranger when treating me this way, for I assure you, He is going to no trouble about carrying on a conversation with me!

In savoring a finite joy
the very most one can expect
is to enfeeble and destroy
our taste, leaving the palate wrecked;
for all the sweetness there may be
I’ll never throw away my soul…

Hope creates an emptiness in the memory constraining it to occupy itself with something it does not yet possess. It teaches us to hope for everything from God and for nothing from ourselves or from other creatures; to hope for eternal happiness from Him and therefore to renounce every pleasure and possession in this life.

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.

...if you see a person praised, the Lord wants you to be much happier than if you yourself were being praised. This, indeed, is easy, for if you have humility you will feel sorry to see yourself praised. But this happiness that comes when the virtues of the Sisters are known is a very good thing; and when we see some fault in them, it is also a very good thing to be sorry and hide the fault as though it were our own.

...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.

Let us not tire of praising so great a King and Lord, who has prepared for us a kingdom without end in exchange for some little troubles which will end tomorrow and which come wrapped in a thousand joys.

Those who work for God with purest love not only care nothing about whether others see their works, but do not even seek that God himself know of them. Such persons would not cease to render God the same services, with the same joy and purity of love, even if God were never to know of these.

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.

Don't be troubled, little sisters, if I suffer very much and if you see in me, as I've already said, no sign of happiness at the moment of my death. Our Lord really dies as a Victim of Love, and you see what His agony was!

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.

The divine light is here very appropriately called the approaches of Dawn, that is, twilight. For as the twilight of the morn disperses the light of day, so the mind, tranquil and reposing in God, is raised up from the darkness of natural knowledge to the morning light of the supernatural knowledge of God.