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To live happily, we must surrender ourselves to God’s will in everything and everywhere, submit to reason, and follow the will of others rather than our own. Provided our hearts are united to God, we should pay no heed to whether others speak well or ill of us, do what we ought, and let others do as they wish.

What you most seek and desire you will not find by this way of yours, nor through high contemplation, but in much humility and submission of heart.

Those who seek to please God without reservation, at all times and in every situation, draw upon themselves the divine gaze and receive from the Sacred Heart of Jesus the greatest affection and care.

Do not accept anything as the truth if it lacks love. And do not accept anything as love which lacks truth! One without the other becomes a destructive lie.

That is what life in Carmel means: to live in God, contemplating His goodness and beauty, and dedicated entirely to the fulfillment of His blessed Will. Then every immolation, every sacrifice becomes divine; through everything the soul sees Him whom she loves and everything leads her to Him... it is a continual communion. All day long she surrenders herself to Love, by doing the will of God, under His gaze, with Him, in Him, for Him alone.

Today while beseeching our Lord to speak for me because I wasn’t able to think of anything to say nor did I know how to begin to carry out this obedience, there came to my mind what I shall now speak about, that which will provide us with a basis to begin with. It is that we consider our soul to be like a castle made entirely out of a diamond or of very clear crystal, in which there are many rooms, just as in heaven there are many dwelling places.

I desire to suffer always and not to die. I should add: this is not my will, it is my inclination. It is sweet to think of Jesus; but it is sweeter to do His will.

These persons are most imperfect and unreasonable; for they set bodily penance before subjection and obedience, which is penance according to reason and discretion, and therefore a sacrifice more acceptable and pleasing to God than any other.

I see clearly, and since then have always seen, that if we are to please God, and if He is to give us His great graces, everything must pass through the hands of His most sacred humanity, in whom His majesty said that He is well pleased.

Many of these beginners ...feel an aversion toward adapting their will to God's. Hence they frequently believe that what is not their will, or brings them no satisfaction, is not God's will, and, on the other hand, that if they are satisfied, God is too. They measure God by themselves and not themselves by God...

It benefits me little to be alone making acts of devotion to our Lord, proposing and promising to do wonders in his service, if I then go away and when the occasion offers itself do everything the opposite. If his Majesty showed us his love by means of such works and frightful torments, how is it you want to please him only with words?

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.