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Let us be wholly His...Let us be invaded...that He may be the Life of our life, and we may consciously remain day and night under His divine action.

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 is good to serve God in darkness and trial! We have only this life to live by faith.

The deeper a soul is bound to God, the more completely surrendered to grace, the stronger will be its influence on the form of the church. Conversely, the more an era is engulfed in the night of sin and estrangement from God the more it needs souls united to God.

One does not die carrying the cross. And yet to pass completely through the night, the man of sin has to die. He can abandon himself to crucifixion, but he cannot crucify himself. That is why the operation has to be brought to completion by God himself.

Jesus prefers leaving me in darkness to giving me a false light which would not be Himself.

Sometimes when I am in such a state of spiritual dryness that not a single good thought occurs to me, I say very slowly the "Our Father," or the "Hail Mary," and these prayers suffice to take me out of myself.

Through this humility acquired by means of self-knowledge, individuals are purged of all those imperfections of the vice of pride into which they fell in the time of their prosperity. Aware of their own dryness and wretchedness, the thought of their being more advanced than others does not even occur in its first movements, as it did before; on the contrary, they realize that others are better.

But God also, by means of this dark and dry night of contemplation, supernaturally instructs in his divine wisdom the soul that is empty and unhindered.

Oh, how powerful over souls is the apostle who remains always at the Spring of living waters; then he can overflow without his soul becoming empty, since he lives in communion with the Infinite!

As to the aridity you are suffering from, it seems to me our Lord is treating you like someone He considers strong: He wants to test you and see if you love Him as much at times of aridity as when He sends you consolations. I think this is a very great favor for God to show you.

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.