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It's an amusing thing that even though we still have a thousand impediments and imperfections and our virtues have hardly begun to grow -and please, God, they might have begun- we are yet not ashamed to seek spiritual delights in prayer or to complain about dryness.

The most holy, the most general and most necessary practice in the spiritual life is the practice of the presence of God, whereby the soul finds her joy and contentment in His companionship, talking humbly and lovingly to Him always and at all times, without rule or system, but particularly in moments of temptation, of trouble, or spiritual dryness, or revulsion, and especially when we fall into unfaithfulness and sin.

Good works wrought in the season of spiritual dryness and hardness are like the freshness of the winter morning. What we then do for God in dryness of spirit is most precious in His eyes. It is then that we acquire abundant virtues and graces, and what we achieve with toil and labor is in general better, more perfect and lasting than what we acquire in spiritual sweetness.

Ordinarily this contemplation, which is secret and hidden from the very one who receives it, imparts to the soul, together with the dryness and emptiness it produces in the senses, an inclination to remain alone and in quietude.

With regard to the fear about whether or not I was in the state of grace, He (Jesus) told me: "Daughter, light is very different from darkness. I am faithful. Nobody will be lost unknowingly. They who find security in spiritual favors will be deceived. True security is the testimony of a good conscience. But people should not think that through their own efforts they can be light or that they can do anything to prevent the night, because these states depend upon my grace. The best help for holding on to the light is to understand that you can do nothing and that it comes from me. For even though you may be in light, at the moment I withdraw, the night will come. This is true humility: to know what you can do and what I can do."

In this arid and obscure night the soul undergoes a thorough reform in its imperfections of avarice, in which it coveted various spiritual objects and was never content with any of its spiritual exercises.

I give thanks to Jesus for making me walk in darkness, and in the darkness I enjoy profound peace. Indeed, I consent to remain through all my religious life in the gloomy passage into which He has led me. I desire only that my darkness may obtain light for sinners.

Our life is the life of heaven. St John of the Cross has said that the contemplative has no task here below that she will not have in heaven. The difference is that on earth that task is done in the obscurity of faith; in heaven there will be no veil between God and us.

The divine life which is enkindled in the soul is the Light that came into the darkness-the mystery of the Holy Night. The one who bears it within himself understands its meaning...God is in us and we in Him; that is our portion of the kingdom of God, established by the Incarnation.

Oh, then, when everything was dark, when the present was so painful and the future seemed even more gloomy to me, I closed my eyes and abandoned myself like a child in the arms of this Heavenly Father... We look at ourselves too much, we want to see and understand, we do not have enough confidence in Him who envelops us in His love.

All of this darkness signifies the obscurity of faith with which the divinity is clothed while communicating itself to the soul.

Ask the Most Holy Virgin to be your guide, to be your star, the lamp that shines in the midst of the darkness of your life.