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Learn, for the Creator's sake, to overcome yourself in all things; and then you will be able to attain to the knowledge of God.

We are His, sisters, let Him do what He will with us, and lead us where He will. If we are really humble and annihilate ourselves, not only in our imagination (which often deceives us), but if we truly detach ourselves from all things, our Lord will not only grant us these favors but many others that we do not know even how to desire.

For the spiritual and the sensual desires are put to sleep and mortified, so that they can experience nothing, either Divine or human; the affections of the soul are oppressed and constrained, so that they can neither move nor find support in anything; the imagination is bound and can make no useful reflection; the memory is gone; the understanding is in darkness, unable to understand anything; and hence the will likewise is arid and constrained and all the faculties are void and useless; and in addition to all this a thick and heavy cloud is upon the soul, keeping it in affliction, and, as it were, far away from God.

Sometimes He calls souls by means of sickness or troubles, or by some truth He teaches them during prayer, for tepid as they may be in seeking Him, yet God holds them very dear.

When the evening of life comes, I shall stand before You with empty hands, because I do not ask You, my God, to take account of my works. All our good deeds are blemished in Your eyes. I wish therefore to be robed with Your own justice, and to receive from Your love the everlasting gift of Yourself. I desire no other throne but You, O my Beloved!

Whoever lives in the presence of so good a friend and excellent leader, who went ahead of us to be the first to suffer, can endure all things. The Lord helps us, strengthens us, and never fails.

Hence, don't pay any attention to the fears they raise or to the picture of the dangers they paint for you...Should anyone tell you that prayer is dangerous, consider him the real danger and run from him. Don't forget this counsel, for perhaps you will need it. There will be danger in not having humility and the other virtues. But that the way of prayer be a way of danger - God would never will that. It seems the devil has invented these fears, and so he has been skillful, apparently, in making some who have practiced prayer fall away.

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

For these are souls who, instead of committing themselves to God and making use of His help, rather hinder God by the indiscretion of their actions or by their resistance; like children who, when their mothers desire to carry them in their arms, start stamping and crying, and insist upon being allowed to walk, with the result that they can make no progress; and, if they advance at all, it is only at the pace of a child.

Unlike our friends in the world, He will never abandon us when we are troubled or distressed. Blessed is the one who truly loves Him and always keeps Him near.

O Eternal Word, utterance of my God, I want to spend my life listening to you, to become totally teachable so that I might learn all from you. Through all darkness, all emptiness, all powerlessness, I want to keep my eyes fixed on you and to remain under your great light. O my Beloved Star, so fascinate me that I may never be able to leave your radiance.

When the spiritual man has been brought to nothing, when his humility is perfect, then will take place the union of the soul with God. This consists not in spiritual refreshment, sweetness and fine sentiments but in the living death of the cross.