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True union can very well be reached, with God's help, if we make the effort to obtain it by keeping our wills fixed only on that which is God's will.

"In perfect love this law holds: that the lover become like the one he loves; for the greater their likeness the greater their delight. Surely your bride's delight would greatly increase were she to see you like her, in her own flesh." "My will is yours," the Son replied, "and my glory is that your will be mine...

Thus, no one...can disturb the soul that is liberated and purged of all things and united with God. She enjoys now in this state a habitual sweetness and tranquility which is never lost or lacking to her.

I like to find at least a few moments each day spent in doing good for others out of love for God. These few moments, almost unnoticeably used, bring something like rays of peace and comfort behind them. They unite us with people and God with purity and sweetness.

The Lord wishes us rather to make requests of Him and to remember that we are in His presence, for He knows what is fitting for us. I cannot believe in the efficacy of human activity in matters where His Majesty appears to have set a limit to it and to have been pleased to reserve action to Himself.

For, after all the efforts of the soul, it cannot by its unaided labors make itself fitted for union with God in love. God must take it to Himself into His own hands and purify it in the dark fire.

All Three Persons of the Holy Trinity dwell in the soul that loves Them ‘in truth’ ... keeping Their word. And when the soul has understood its riches, whatever natural or supernatural joy may come to it from creatures or even from God, only calls it to enter within itself, to enjoy the substantial good which it possesses and which is none other than God Himself.

... When there is union of love, the image of the Beloved is so sketched in the will and drawn so vividly, that it is true to say that the Beloved lives in the lover and the lover in the Beloved...The reason is, that in the union and transformation of love, each gives possession of self to the other, and each leaves and exchanges self for the other. Thus each one lives in the other and is the other, and both are one in the transformation of love.

Your wisdom, O Word, is like the bush you showed to Moses, which burned, but was not consumed...Those who seek and go after the wisdom that is human abhor your wisdom, but to God human wisdom is foolishness....In addition, by abhorring your wisdom, they deny themselves union with you, for by offending you they deprive themselves both of you and of it....

Oh, then soul most beautiful among all creatures, so anxious to know the dwelling place of your Beloved so you may go in search of him and be united with him, now we are telling you that you yourself are his dwelling and his secret inner room and hiding place.

There is reason for you to be elated and joyful in seeing that all your good and hope is so close as to be within you, or better, that you cannot be without him.

Mark well, however, that self-knowledge is indispensable, even for those whom God takes to dwell in the same mansion with Himself. Nothing else, however elevated, perfects the soul which must never seek to forget its own nothingness. Let humility be always at work, like the bee at the honeycomb, or all will be lost. But, remember, the bee leaves its hive to fly in search of flowers and the soul should sometimes cease thinking of itself to rise in meditation on the grandeur and majesty of its God. It will learn its own baseness better thus than by self-contemplation, and will be freer from the reptiles which enter the first room where self-knowledge is acquired.

The most holy, the most general and most necessary practice in the spiritual life is the practice of the presence of God, whereby the soul finds her joy and contentment in His companionship, talking humbly and lovingly to Him always and at all times, without rule or system, but particularly in moments of temptation, of trouble, or spiritual dryness, or revulsion, and especially when we fall into unfaithfulness and sin.