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The cross and peace are my portion. But the cross and discouragement are the portion of the enemy and of those who listen to the enemy.

But because being one with Christ is our sanctity, and progressively becoming one with him our happiness on earth, the love of the cross in no way contradicts being a joyful child of God. Helping Christ carry his cross fills one with a strong and pure joy, and those who may and can do so, the builders of God's kingdom, are the most authentic children of God.

Since this flame is a flame of divine life, it wounds the soul with the tenderness of God's life, and it wounds and stirs it so deeply as to make it dissolve in love. What the bride affirmed in the Song of Songs is fulfilled in the soul. She was so moved that her soul melted, and so she says: As soon as he spoke my soul melted [Sg. 5:6]. For God's speech is the effect he produces in the soul.

When you're suffering, look at Jesus. He is loving you with tenderness, because you are participating in his cross, in the cross He carried in His most divine Heart from Bethlehem to Calvary. Place yourself and everything around you in that Heart of Jesus. Lie abandoned to His holy Will. From that abandonment, oneness with God will be born.

It is most important, I say, that no one should be distressed or afflicted because of aridities or disturbances or distractions in his thoughts. If he wishes to gain freedom of spirit and not always to be troubled, let him begin by not being afraid of the Cross. Then he will see how Our Lord will help him to carry it, and will advance joyfully and gain profit from everything.

The cross is not an end in itself. It beckons one toward the summit. Therefore it is not only a standard, it is also Christ's powerful weapon, the triumphal symbol with which He knocks at the gate of heaven and throws it wide.

One attains possession of a knowledge of the cross only when one experiences the cross to the very depths.

We have to learn to see others carry the cross and not be able to remove it from them. It is more difficult than to carry our own, but we cannot avoid it.

They are too attached to their honor. . . . These souls, for the most part, grieve over anything said against them. They do not embrace the cross but drag it along, and so it hurts and wearies them and breaks them to pieces. However, if the cross is loved, it is easy to bear, this is certain.

How good Jesus is to give me His cross; thus can I show Him my love, and live in unending Communion with Him.

Knowing, O my God, that my sins made Your cross so heavy that You had to sink beneath it, this makes me even more convinced that I must carry my cross together with You and that I should not shy away from it, even should I sink beneath its weight.

I thank You, O my God, for all the graces You have bestowed on me, and particularly for making me pass through the crucible of suffering. It is with joy I shall behold You on the Last Day bearing Your scepter - the Cross; since You have deigned to give me for my portion this most precious Cross, I have hope of resembling You in Heaven and seeing the sacred stigmata of Your Passion shine in my glorified body.