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Believe, daughter, that My Father gives greater trials to anyone whom He loves more; and love responds to these. How can I show you greater love than by desiring for you what I have desired for Myself? Behold these wounds, for your sufferings have never reached this point. Suffering is the way of truth.

I thank You, O my God, for all the graces You have bestowed on me, and particularly for making me pass through the crucible of suffering. It is with joy I shall behold You on the Last Day bearing Your scepter - the Cross; since You have deigned to give me for my portion this most precious Cross, I have hope of resembling You in Heaven and seeing the sacred stigmata of Your Passion shine in my glorified body.

I desire neither death nor life. Were Our Lord to offer me my choice, I would not choose. I only will what He wills, and I am pleased with whatever He does. I have no fear of the last struggle, or of any pain, however great, which my illness may bring. God has always been my help; He has led me by the hand since I was a child and I count on Him now. Even though suffering should reach its furthest limits I am certain He will never forsake me.

The more interior the suffering is and the less apparent to the eyes of creatures, the more it rejoices You, O my God!

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?

Terrible trials are suffered because we don’t understand ourselves, and that which isn’t bad at all but good we think is a serious fault. This lack of knowledge causes the afflictions of many people who engage in prayer; complaints about interior trials, at least to a great extent, by people who have no learning; melancholy and loss of health; and even the complete abandonment of prayer.

You will ask me perhaps how we are to glorify Him. It is very simple...cling closely to the will of this adorable Master. Look upon everything, every suffering and every joy, as coming straight from Him and your life will be a continual communion since everything will be, as it were, a sacrament which gives you God — and that is really true, for God is not divided. His will is Himself. He is wholly and entirely in everything and these things are, in a way, but an emanation of His love.

If a person has more patience in suffering and more forbearance in going without satisfaction, it is a sign that he is more proficient in virtue.

O you souls who wish to go on with so much safety and consolation, if you knew how pleasing to God is suffering, and how much it helps in acquiring other good things, you would never seek consolation in anything; but you would rather look upon it as a great happiness to bear the Cross of the Lord.

When evening comes and a backward glance shows us that we have not finished even a minimum part of the work that we had planned and that much remains incomplete, when so many things provoke shame and sorrow, then let us take everything as it is and place it in the hands of God, entrusting it to Him. In this way we will be able to repose in Him, truly rest and to begin the new day as if it were a new life.

Work, especially great work, is a burden and a pain, a suffering precisely because intense activity cannot fail to generate in us that disagreeable phenomenon that is called fatigue, which eventually degenerates into depression or prostration or some other form of real and actual suffering. This painful aspect of work renders it particularly adapted to share as an instrument in the work of our sanctification.

Are you so in need, my Lord and my Love, that You would want to receive such poor company as mine, for I see by Your expression that You have been consoled by me? If it's true, Lord that You want to want to endure everything for me, what is this that I suffer for You? Of what am I complaining?