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The door by which we can enter this castle is prayer. It is absurd to think that we can enter Heaven without first entering our own souls -- without getting to know ourselves, and reflecting upon the wretchedness of our nature and what we owe to God, and continually imploring His mercy.

It is in prayer that the soul learns to know Jesus and thus to love him. Since love cannot be satisfied with difference but with equality, the result is union in similarity.

In sum, there is no remedy in this tempest but to wait for the mercy of God. For at an unexpected time, with one word or a chance happening, He so quickly calms the storm that it seems there had not been even as much as a cloud in that soul, and it remains filled with sunlight and much more consolation.

I have made more acts of faith during the past year than in all the rest of my life. Whenever my enemy provokes me to combat, I try to behave like a gallant soldier. Aware that a duel is an act of cowardice, I turn my back on the foe without once looking him in the face; then hastening to my Savior I tell Him that I am ready to shed my blood as a witness to my belief in Heaven. I tell Him that if He will deign to open it for eternity to poor unbelievers, I am content to sacrifice during my life all joyous thoughts of the Home that awaits me.

Our Lord became a spring for us, so that we should not die of thirst among all the miseries that surround us.

We must keep in mind, for the better understanding of this, that the soul lives there where it loves, rather than in the body which it animates. The soul does not live by the body, but, on the contrary, gives it life, and lives by love in that which it loves.

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.

Then gradually, he becomes very small and humble; he grows patient and indulgent toward the splinter in strange eyes because the beam in his own is brought into being; and, finally, he also learns to be patient with himself in the inexorable light of the divine Presence and to surrender himself to the divine mercy which can take care of all that ridicules our energy.

How amazing and pitiful it is that the soul be so utterly weak and impure that the hand of God, though light and gentle, should feel so heavy and contrary. For the hand of God does not press down or weigh on the soul, but only touches it; and this mercifully, for God's aim is to grant it favors and not to chastise it.

When one gives his time to God, he finds time to accomplish all his duties.

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

O true God and my Lord! It is a great consolation for the soul wearied by the loneliness of being separated from You to see that You are everywhere.