Archive

God highly esteems these works...done for him in aridity and hardship, for by such means the virtues and gifts are acquired in a high degree. Those acquired through this labor are for the most part more select, refined, and stable than if they were obtained with spiritual relish and enjoyment, for virtue takes root in dryness, difficulty, and labor, as God says to St. Paul: Virtue is made prefect in weakness.

It also happens very quickly and ineffably that God will show within Himself a truth that seems to leave in obscurity all those that are in creatures, and one understands very clearly that God alone is Truth, unable to lie.

David also said that clouds and darkness are near God and surround him [Ps. 18:11], not because this is true in itself, but because it appears thus to our weak intellects, which in being unable to attain so bright a light are blinded and darkened.

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.

When one is in the midst of business matters, and in times of persecutions and trials, when one can't maintain so much quietude, and in times of dryness, Christ is a very good friend...He is company for us. Once we have the habit, it is very easy to find Him present at our side.

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.

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!

The soul ought to consider aridity and darkness as fortunate omens; as signs that God is beside it, freeing it from itself, taking the initiative out of its hand.

Through all things, by day and by night, in clear light or in darkness, let us live like the Magdelen, always under the eyes of Unchangeable Beauty.

In the night of blindness that the Lord had made fall on his eyes, Saul waited in solitary prayer for the Lord's answer to his question: "What would you have me do?" And Peter learned of his mission to the pagans while praying in solitude.

Jesus prefers leaving me in darkness to giving me a false light which would not be Himself.

The soul states that it was able to make this escape because of the strength and warmth gained from loving its Bridegroom in this obscure contemplation. It emphasizes its good fortune in having journeyed to God through this dark night.