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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.

Who are you, sweet Light, who inundate
me and enlighten the night of my heart?
You guide me just like a mother's hand;
but if you leave me
I cannot advance a single step.
You are space
that surrounds my being
and in which it is concealed.
If you abandon me I fall into the abyss
of nothingness, from where
you called me into being.
You are nearer to me than myself
more intimate than my inmost being.
And yet no one touches you
or understands you
and you break the bonds of every name:
Holy Spirit - Eternal Love!

Just as Jesus in the extreme abandonment at His death surrendered Himself into the hands of the invisible and incomprehensible God, so will the soul yield herself to the midnight darkness of faith which is the only way to the incomprehensible God.

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.

When we have many things to do, when we are persecuted and in trouble, when we cannot have much rest, and when we have our seasons of dryness, Christ is our best Friend; for we regard Him as Man, and behold Him faint and in trouble, and He is our Companion.

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.

Whoever, led by the truth of faith, seeks God, will set out by his free effort precisely to there, where the mystically graced are drawn...into the empty solitude of his interior in order to linger there in dark faith- in a simply loving upward glance of the spirit to the hidden God who is presently veiled.

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.

In the dark night of the soul, bright flows the river of God.

Faith furnishes a certain but obscure knowledge to the understanding. In fact it shows us God as inaccessible light, as incomprehensible and infinite Being before whom every natural force gives way. And it is just for this motive that faith reduces reason to its intrinsic nothingness: to the realization of its impotence and of the grandeur of God.

Lord, if it please You that the darkness of my soul become deeper, that I not see You, it will not bother me because I want to fulfill Your will. I want to spend my life suffering to make reparation for my sins and those of sinners and so priests will be sanctified.

O Lord, what does it matter, when I can retire within myself, enlightened by faith, whether I feel or don't feel, whether I am in light or darkness, enjoy or do not enjoy?  I am struck by a kind of shame at making any distinction between such things...Help me to exalt You...above the sweetness and consolations which flow from You, because I have resolved to pass by all else in order to be united with You.