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And it is clear that since God wants to lead those whom He greatly loves by the path of tribulation there is no reason to think that He despises contemplatives, for with His own mouth He praises them and considers them His friends.

Since man's life on earth is a time of trial and all who would live devotedly in Christ must undergo persecution and the devil your foe is on the prowl like a roaring lion looking for prey to devour, you must use every care to clothe yourselves in God's armor so that you may be ready to withstand the enemy's ambush.

Our Lord needs from us neither great deeds nor profound thoughts. Neither intelligence nor talents. He cherishes simplicity.

Courage my sister, the yoke of a Carmelite if necessarily very light or very heavy in proportion as one's courage bear it or one's cowardice drags it.

Midnight is not the time to greet a guest.
Caution the doors against both foes and friends,
and try to make the windows understand
their unimportance when the daylight ends.
Persuade the stairs to patience,
and deny the passages their aimless to and fro.
Virtue it is that puts a house at rest.
How well repaid that tenant is, how blest
who, when the call is heard,
is free to take his kindled heart and go.

It is that much harder to let what belongs to us be taken without asking for it back. But the moment we accept this, we feel how light the burden is.

To be a child of God, that means to be led by the hand of God, to do the will of God, not one's own will, to place every care and every hope in the hand of God and not to worry about oneself or one's future. On this rests the joy of the child of God.

At the evening of life, you will be examined in love.

I realize that we aren't all made alike. For me, God's infinite mercy is the quality that stands out in my life, and when I contemplate and adore God's other perfections, it's against this background of mercy all the time.

In savoring a finite joy
the very most one can expect
is to enfeeble and destroy
our taste, leaving the palate wrecked;
for all the sweetness there may be
I’ll never throw away my soul…

God is freeing my heart of every natural attraction, perhaps to make room there for purer things in which there will be only the desire for my neighbor's good.

Against all the movements of like and dislike the Lord's precept is set: "Thou must love thy neighbor as thyself." That applies without conditions or reductions. The neighbor is not he whom I like. It is everyone who approaches me, without exception. And again it enjoins, "Thou canst, so thou must!" It is the Lord who demands it, and He demands nothing impossible. Much more, He makes possible, what of course would not be possible.