Archive

The soul is not united with God in this life through understanding, or through enjoyment, or through imagination, or through any other sense; but only faith, hope, and charity (according to the intellect, memory, and will) can unite the soul with God in this life.

In what peace, in what recollection Mary lent herself to everything she did! How even the most trivial things were divinized by her! For through it all the Virgin remained the adorer of the gift of God! This did not prevent her from spending herself outwardly when it was a matter of charity.

Be careful never to waste an occasion for mortification by complaining.

His Majesty couldn't grant us a greater favor than to give us a life that would be an imitation of the life His beloved Son lived.

Those who practice prayer should have a special affection for him (St. Joseph) always. I do not know how anyone can think of the Queen of the Angels, during the time that she suffered so much with the Child Jesus, without giving thanks to Saint Joseph for the way he helped them. If anyone cannot find a master to teach him how to pray, let him take this glorious saint as his master and he will not go astray.

God is love, and love is goodness giving itself away.

First, have a habitual desire to imitate Christ in all your deeds by bringing your life into conformity with His. You must then study His life in order to know how to imitate Him and behave in all events as He would.

Those who work for God with purest love not only care nothing about whether others see their works, but do not even seek that God himself know of them. Such persons would not cease to render God the same services, with the same joy and purity of love, even if God were never to know of these.

If you are nothing, do you forget that Jesus is everything? You have only to lose your nothingness in His infinity and think only of loving Him.

I propose to have no other purpose in all my activities, either interior or ex­terior, than the motive of love alone, by constantly asking myself: ‘Now what am I doing in this action? Do I love God?’ If I should notice any obstacle to pure love, I shall take myself in hand and recall that I must seek to return my love for His love.

If I look at things from an earthly standpoint I see loneliness and even emptiness, for I cannot say that my heart has not suffered; but if I keep my eyes fixed upon Him, my shining Star, then all the rest vanishes and I lose myself as a drop of water in the ocean. All is calm, all is soothed and all is so good; it is the peace of God of which St Paul speaks, the peace that ‘surpasseth all understanding.’

Through perseverance in its spiritual exercises without consolation or satisfaction, the soul practices the love of God.