Archive

We are so ignorant that what we have read and been told has not sufficed to teach us to disregard wandering thoughts, therefore I shall not be wasting time in instructing and consoling you about these trials. However, this will help you but little until God chooses to enlighten you, and additional measures are needed: His Majesty wishes us to learn by ordinary means to understand ourselves and to recognize the share taken in these troubles by our wandering imagination, our nature, and the devil’s temptations, instead of laying all the blame on our souls.

Beware, daughters, of a certain kind of humility suggested by the devil which is accompanied by great anxiety about the gravity of our sins.

God gives me courage in proportion to my sufferings. I feel at this moment I couldn’t suffer any more, but I’m not afraid since if they increase, He will increase my courage at the same time.

Believe that He loves you. He wants to help you Himself in the struggles you must undergo. Believe in His Love. His exceeding love.

The devil does a great deal to incapacitate us when he sees a little fear.

He who wants to win the world for Christ must have the courage to come in conflict with it.

…many remain at the foot of the mount who could ascend to the top. I repeat and ask that you always have courageous thoughts. As a result of them the Lord will give you grace for courageous deeds.

And although for so great a gain all that we must endure is but a poor price to pay, I assure you, daughters, that this pledge of what is in store for us is needed to inspire us with courage to bear our crosses.

I would like to fly as the eagle does, but I can only flutter my wings - it is beyond my feeble strength to soar.

Love is swift, sincere, pious, pleasant and delightful; strong, patient, faithful, prudent, long-suffering, courageous, and never seeking itself: for where a man seeks himself, there he falls from love.

God does not despise these hidden struggles with ourselves, so much richer in merit because they are unseen: "The patient man is better than the valiant and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh cities. (Prov. xvi. 32)".

Here, however, the understanding being more vigilant and the powers more on the alert, we cannot avoid hearing the fighting and cannonading around us. For now the devils set on us the reptiles, that is to say, thoughts about the world and its joys which they picture as unending; they remind us of the high esteem men held us in, of our friends and relations; they tell us how the penances which souls in this mansion always begin to wish to perform would injure our health: in fine, the evil spirits place a thousand impediments in the way.