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I realize that we aren't all made alike. For me, God's infinite mercy is the quality that stands out in my life, and when I contemplate and adore God's other perfections, it's against this background of mercy all the time.

In savoring a finite joy
the very most one can expect
is to enfeeble and destroy
our taste, leaving the palate wrecked;
for all the sweetness there may be
I’ll never throw away my soul…

God is freeing my heart of every natural attraction, perhaps to make room there for purer things in which there will be only the desire for my neighbor's good.

Against all the movements of like and dislike the Lord's precept is set: "Thou must love thy neighbor as thyself." That applies without conditions or reductions. The neighbor is not he whom I like. It is everyone who approaches me, without exception. And again it enjoins, "Thou canst, so thou must!" It is the Lord who demands it, and He demands nothing impossible. Much more, He makes possible, what of course would not be possible.

More effective than the mortification one practices according to one's own choice is the cross that God lays upon one, exteriorly and interiorly.

Mary is the place of this meeting; better still, she is the temple in which is consummated God's espousals with humanity, the hidden sanctuary in which the Spouse is united with the bride, the desert that flowers at the breath of God.

A Praise of Glory is a silent soul, which remains like a lyre beneath the mysterious touch of the Holy Spirit, so that He may call forth divine harmonies from it.

Frequently God wants only our will; He asks all, and if we were to refuse Him the least thing, He loves us too much to give in to us; however, as soon as our will is conformed to His, as soon as He sees we seek Him alone, then He conducts Himself with us as in the past He conducted Himself with Abraham who was willing to sacrifice his beloved son; when God saw Abraham willing to offer even his best beloved, God cancelled the request.

He wants you to go out from yourself to leave all preoccupations, in order to retire into that solitude which He is choosing for Himself in the depths of your heart. He is always there, even when you do not feel Him. He is waiting for you, to establish with you ... an intimate union.

The fly that clings to honey hinders its flight, and the soul that allows itself attachment to spiritual sweetness hinders its own liberty and contemplation.

Prayer is looking up into the face of the Eternal. We can do this only when the spirit is awake in its innermost depths,
freed from all earthly occupations and pleasures that benumb it. Being awake in body does not guarantee this consciousness, nor does rest required by nature interfere.

My life begins anew each morning and ends each evening; beyond that I have no plans or intentions; that is, it may be part of one's daily duties to plan ahead, but one must never worry about the next day.