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As soon as natural things are driven out of the enamored soul, the divine are naturally and supernaturally infused since there can be no void in nature.

Many of these beginners have also at times great spiritual avarice. They will be found to be discontented with the spirituality which God gives them; and they are very disconsolate and querulous because they find not in spiritual things the consolation that they would desire.

Instead of becoming discouraged, I say to myself, “The good God does not inspire us with desires that could not be realized. Therefore, in spite of my lowliness, I can aspire to sanctity.”

In the evening of life, we will be judged on love alone.

His Majesty knows what is good for us; it is not for us to advise Him how to treat us, for He has the right to tell us that we know not what we ask. Remember, it is of the greatest importance- the sole aim of one beginning to practice prayer should be to endure trials, and to resolve and strive to the utmost of her power to conform her own will to the will of God.

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.

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.

God deliver us from spiritual people who are so spiritual that they want to turn everything into perfect contemplation, come what may. It would be a bad business for us if we could not seek God until we were dead to the world. Neither Magdalene, nor the woman of Samaria, nor the Canaanite woman was dead to the world when she found him.

For, as I have said, God now sees that they have grown a little, and are becoming strong enough to lay aside their swaddling clothes and be taken from the gentle breast; so He sets them down from His arms and teaches them to walk on their own feet; which they feel to be very strange, for everything seems to be going wrong with them.

We have always seen that those who were closest to Christ our Lord were those with the greatest trials. Let us look at what His glorious Mother suffered as well as the glorious apostles.

If God is in us, and if God is love, it is inevitable that we be brothers; because love of our neighbor is the measure of our love for God.

I have found heaven on earth, since heaven is God, and God is in my soul. My mission in heaven will be to draw souls, helping them to go out of themselves to cling to God, with a spontaneous, love-filled action, and to keep them in that great interior silence which enables God to make his mark on them, to transform them into himself.