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I understood that I had a great obligation to serve our Lady and St Joseph; for often when I went off the path completely, God gave me salvation again through their prayers.

When I am in this state of spiritual dryness, unable to pray, or to practice virtue, I look for little opportunities, for the smallest trifles, to give pleasure to Jesus; a smile or a kind word, for instance, when I would wish to be silent, or to show that I am bored.

The door by which we can enter this castle is prayer. It is absurd to think that we can enter Heaven without first entering our own souls -- without getting to know ourselves, and reflecting upon the wretchedness of our nature and what we owe to God, and continually imploring His mercy.

It is in prayer that the soul learns to know Jesus and thus to love him. Since love cannot be satisfied with difference but with equality, the result is union in similarity.

In truth, it is impossible that a heart which can find rest only in contemplation of the Tabernacle-and yours is such, you tell me- could so far offend Our Lord as not to be able to receive Him. . . . What does offend Jesus, what wounds Him to the Heart, is want of confidence.

Feed not your spirit on anything but God. Cast off concern about things, and bear peace and recollection in your heart.

The whole aim of any person who is beginning prayer-and don't forget this, because it's very important-should be that he work and prepare himself with determination and every possible effort to bring his will into conformity with God's will...The greatest perfection attainable along the spiritual path lies in this conformity.

Seek in reading and you will find in meditation; knock in prayer and it will be opened to you in contemplation.

The person who is detached from creatures is not disturbed during prayer or otherwise, and so, without losing precious time, he easily acquires heavenly treasure.

Seeing the silence which reigns in His creature, observing how it is wholly recollected in its interior solitude, the Creator greatly desires its beauty. He leads it into the immense, infinite solitude, into that spacious place of which the Psalmist sings, which is His very self. ‘I will enter into the powers of the Lord’.

I wish to be wholly silent, wholly adoring, so that I may enter into Him more deeply and be so filled with Him that I can give Him through prayer to those poor souls who are unaware of the gift of God.

In the first place, we ought to be astonished by this fact: when we praise God or give him thanks for his benefits in general, we are not particularly concerned whether or not our prayer is acceptable to him. On the other hand, we demand to see the results of our petitions. What is the image of God that motivates our prayer: an instrument to be used or the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?