Archive

Oh, would that I could tell everyone what sources of strength, of peace and also of happiness they would find if they consented to live in this intimate union with Him. Only they do not know how to wait. If God does not bestow Himself in a manner they can feel, they leave His holy presence and when He comes to them, laden with graces, He finds nobody there. The soul has gone away into exterior things; it no longer dwells in its center. Recollect yourself from time to time.

In my Little Way there are only very ordinary things.

To have courage for whatever comes in life – everything lies in that.

It frequently needs only a word or a smile to impart fresh life to a despondent soul. Yet it is not merely in the hope of bringing consolation that I wish to be kind; if it were, I should soon be discouraged, for often well-intentioned words are totally misunderstood. Consequently, in order that I may lose neither time nor labor, I try to act solely to please Our Lord.

And should by chance you do not know
Where to find Me,
Do not go here and there;
But if you wish to find Me,
In yourself seek Me.
Soul, since you are My room,
My house and dwelling,
If at any time,
Through your distracted ways
I find the door tightly closed.
Outside yourself seek Me not,
To find Me it will be
Enough only to call Me,
Then quickly will I come,
And in yourself seek Me.

His Majesty, in saying that the soul is made in His own image, makes it almost impossible for us to understand the sublime dignity and beauty of the soul.

Through this humility acquired by means of self-knowledge, individuals are purged of all those imperfections of the vice of pride into which they fell in the time of their prosperity. Aware of their own dryness and wretchedness, the thought of their being more advanced than others does not even occur in its first movements, as it did before; on the contrary, they realize that others are better.

The soul loses itself, making no account whatever of itself but of the Beloved, resigning itself freely into His hands without any self-seeking. It holds everything of no value unless it serves the beloved.

Our created essence cries out to rejoin its Principle. The Word, the Splendour of the Father, is the eternal prototype on which creatures are designed on the day of their creation. That is why God wills that, having been freed from what is purely of self, we shall stretch out our arms … and possess Him …this contemplation opens up to the soul prospects before unhoped for.

But God also, by means of this dark and dry night of contemplation, supernaturally instructs in his divine wisdom the soul that is empty and unhindered.

I only think that the soul comes out of the crucible like gold, more refined and purified, so as to see the Lord within itself. So afterward these trials that seemed unbearable become small.

There is such a need to mortify the intellect, the memory, and the exterior senses, so that they become almost spiritual, and then united to the soul they find in God alone their nourishment and their consolation, and they can say: "My heart and my flesh have exulted in the living God."