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I wish...I could help you find consolation near the Cross. In its shadow, every kind of bitterness fades. No one has suffered like Jesus has and, from His cross, He teaches us to bear with every pain in silence and in resignation. From the cross and with open arms He invites us saying; "Come to me all you who are burdened under the weight of suffering and I will give you rest."

...Jesus has taken command of my ship and has protected it from encountering other vessels. He has kept me in solitude with Himself. Consequently, my heart, by knowing this Captain, has fallen under the spell of His love, and here He keeps me captive. Oh, I love this prison and this powerful King who keeps me captive; and how I love this Captain who amid the waves of the ocean doesn't allow me to suffer shipwreck.

O my God, the more gently you touch, the more you are hidden in the purified souls of those who have made themselves aliens on earth, and whom you hide in the secret of your face.

‘You are dead and your life is hidden with Christ in God’ (Col. 3:3). There is the condition: we must be ‘dead’, otherwise we may be hidden in God sometimes, but we do not live habitually in Him; for all our sensitiveness, our self-seeking and such-like, causes us to depart from Him.

... the communication and sense of His presence, however great they may be, and the most sublime and profound knowledge of God which the soul may have in this life, are not God essentially, neither have they any affinity with Him, for in very truth He is still hidden from the soul; and it is therefore expedient for it, amid all these grandeurs, always to consider Him as hidden, and to seek Him in His hiding-place...

Think how Our Lady must have felt when, after the Incarnation, she possessed within her the Incarnate Word, the gift of God! In what depths of silence, of recollection, of adoration, she must have lived in the center of her soul, in order to embrace that God whose Mother she was! He is in us. Let us keep close to Him in that silence, that love of the Virgin Mother.

To what a height of glory we are called! I understand that silence, the recollection of the saints, who could no longer emerge from their contemplation. The good God led them to the summit of the mountain, where union between Himself and the soul that has become His bride is consummated.

Then, when the hour of humiliation comes, when one is brought to nothing, she will remember that short sentence, ‘But Jesus made no further answer’, and she too will be silent, keeping all her strength — that strength we draw from silence — for the Lord. When she is abandoned, forsaken, in anguish — anguish such as that which drew from Our Lord the great cry, ‘Why hast Thou forsaken me? (Mk. 15:34) — she will remember that prayer, ‘That they may have my joy fulfilled in them’ (Jn.17:13) and draining to the dregs the chalice prepared by the Father, she will find a heavenly sweetness in its bitterness.

Whenever anything disagreeable or displeasing happens to you, remember Christ crucified and be silent.

Jesus is mysterious. When we approach Him, usually He remains silent. In this silence, what is His attitude towards us? He tells us in the parable of the Good Shepherd: He sees us with His love, He knows us, and even if He remains silent, He knows exactly what we are, what we think, what we love and what we do.

There may come a day when my glory will sing to Him, and when my conscience will not feel compunction, where all sighs and fears will have ceased; but in the meantime, in silence and hope will be my strength.

Why should we defend ourselves when we are misunderstood and misjudged? Let us leave that aside. Let us not say anything...O blessed silence, which gives so much peace to the soul.