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Oh, would that I could tell everyone what sources of strength, of peace and also of happiness they would find if they consented to live in this intimate union with Him. Only they do not know how to wait. If God does not bestow Himself in a manner they can feel, they leave His holy presence and when He comes to them, laden with graces, He finds nobody there. The soul has gone away into exterior things; it no longer dwells in its center. Recollect yourself from time to time.

My God, how well you know my great need of your help. I trust in your infinite mercy, and I shall always do so, regardless of the spiritual state in which I find myself. Always and everywhere I shall endeavor to recognize You will in all things, even though my eyes see only contradiction and uncertainty. I know that I cannot depend upon myself, and so I shall trust completely in You.

They are too much embarrassed to confess their sins nakedly, lest their confessors should think less of them, so they palliate them and make them appear less evil, and thus it is to excuse themselves rather than to accuse themselves that they go to confession.

Mary, a sublime woman is, like us, what she became through the grace and goodness of God. It is true that by the will of God she was chosen by a special grace, but she responded to it without the slightest hint of hesitation and allowed herself to be taken over. She opened her heart to God and God gave himself completely to her.

"Do you know the souls that most enjoy my Goodness?," said our Lord (to a chosen soul). "The ones who trust in me the most. Trusting souls are the ones who steal away my graces. I am all Love, and the greatest pain one can give my Heart is to doubt my Goodness."

It is important to know that our Lord is pleased with any service rendered to His Mother, and great is His mercy.

. . . And yet I have never experienced more fully the sweetness and mercy of Our Lord. He did not send this heavy cross when it would, I believe, have discouraged me, but chose a time when I was able to bear it. Now it does no more than deprive me of all natural satisfaction in my longing for Heaven.

Let them trust in the mercy of God and not at all in themselves, and they will see how His Majesty brings them from the dwelling places of one stage to these of another and settles them in a land where these wild animals cannot touch or tire them, but where they themselves will bring all these animals into subjection and scoff at them.

I had many friends to help me to fall; but as to rising again, I was so much left to myself, that I wonder now I was not always on the ground. I praise God for His mercy; for it was He only Who stretched out His hand to me. May He be blessed for ever! Amen.

I see clearly, and since then have always seen, that if we are to please God, and if He is to give us His great graces, everything must pass through the hands of His most sacred humanity, in whom His majesty said that He is well pleased.

Look at him at the tomb of Lazarus. And listen to what he says of the Magdalene: "Much has been forgiven her, because she has loved much." What do you discover in these flashes from the Gospel except a heart that is good, gentle, tender, compassionate; in other words, the heart of a God?

O Jesus, I feel, that, if by an impossibility You could find a soul weaker than mine, You would fill it with even greater graces, provided that such a soul abandoned itself with absolute confidence to Your infinite Mercy.