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What you most seek and desire you will not find by this way of yours, nor through high contemplation, but in much humility and submission of heart.

For often it is God's will that His elect should be conscious of their misery and so He withdraws His help from them a little -- and no more than that is needed to make us recognize our limitations very quickly. They then realize that this is a way of testing them, for they gain a clear perception of their shortcomings, and sometimes they derive more pain from finding that, in spite of themselves, they are still grieving about earthly things, and not very important things either, than from the matter which is troubling them.

If we are determined to submit ourselves and to carry the cross, we shall find in it great refreshment.

Divine spirit, divine life, divine love means this: he who does the will of God, knows God and loves Him. In fact, at the moment in which we do what God asks, with interior dedication, divine life becomes our life, God is found within ourselves.

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.

...many of these would have God will that which they themselves will, and are fretful at having to will that which He wills...Hence it happens to them that oftentimes they think that that wherein they find not their own will and pleasure is not the will of God; and that, on the other hand, when they themselves find satisfaction, God is satisfied. Thus they measure God by themselves and not themselves by God, acting quite contrarily to that which He Himself taught in the Gospel, saying: That he who should lose his will for His sake, the same should gain it; and he who should desire to gain it, the same should lose it.

The lukewarm are very lax and remiss in their will and spirit, and have no solicitude about serving God. Those suffering from the purgative dryness are ordinarily solicitous, concerned, and pained about not serving God.

I desire to fulfill perfectly Your will, and to reach the degree of glory You have prepared for me in Your kingdom. In a word, I wish to be holy, but, knowing how helpless I am, I beseech You, my God, to be Yourself my holiness.

The soul should firmly resolve never to submit to defeat, for if the devil sees it staunchly determined to lose life and comfort and all that he can offer, rather than return to the first mansion, he will the sooner leave it alone.

The created will is not destined to be free to exalt itself. It is called to come into unison with the divine will. If it freely submits itself to this unison, then it is permitted in freedom to participate in the perfection of creation. If a free creature declines this unison, it lapses into bondage.

If individuals resolutely submit to carrying the cross, if they decidedly want to find and endure trial in all things for God, they will discover in all of them great relief and sweetness.

Let’s concern ourselves with our neighbor and with serving him, even though it may be repugnant to do so. In this way we’ll make sure that the throne of our heart is occupied by God our creator.