Archive

Live in faith and hope even though you are in darkness, for in this darkness God enfolds the soul. Cast your cares upon God, for you are His, and He will never forget you.

The lukewarm are very lax and remiss in their will and spirit, and have no solicitude about serving God. Those suffering from the purgative dryness are ordinarily solicitous, concerned, and pained about not serving God.

The darkness that leads to God is, as we already know, faith. It is the only means that leads to union because it sets God before our eyes as he is: as infinite, as triune. Faith resembles God in that both blind the intellect and appear to it as darkness. "The greater one's faith the closer is one's union with God."

For, however dark a night may be, something can always be seen, but in true darkness nothing can be seen; and thus in the night of sense there still remains some light, for the understanding and reason remain, and are not blinded. But this spiritual night, which is faith, deprives the soul of everything, both as to understanding and as to sense. And for this cause the soul in this night says that it was journeying ‘in darkness and secure,’ which it said not in the other.

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.

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.

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.

When God communicates this bright ray of his secret wisdom to the soul not yet transformed, he causes thick darkness.

A work done without a feeling of pleasure is more pleasing to God than many others done with great delight and feeling. Therefore, when you find yourself in a state of dryness and depression, be glad and exult that God has deigned to give you those greater gifts and sweetest viands that He is wont to offer to those who are dearer to Him and more beloved by Him.

With regard to the fear about whether or not I was in the state of grace, He (Jesus) told me: "Daughter, light is very different from darkness. I am faithful. Nobody will be lost unknowingly. They who find security in spiritual favors will be deceived. True security is the testimony of a good conscience. But people should not think that through their own efforts they can be light or that they can do anything to prevent the night, because these states depend upon my grace. The best help for holding on to the light is to understand that you can do nothing and that it comes from me. For even though you may be in light, at the moment I withdraw, the night will come. This is true humility: to know what you can do and what I can do."

Ask the Most Holy Virgin to be your guide, to be your star, the lamp that shines in the midst of the darkness of your life.

Oh, then, when everything was dark, when the present was so painful and the future seemed even more gloomy to me, I closed my eyes and abandoned myself like a child in the arms of this Heavenly Father... We look at ourselves too much, we want to see and understand, we do not have enough confidence in Him who envelops us in His love.