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The fly that clings to honey hinders its flight, and the soul that allows itself attachment to spiritual sweetness hinders its own liberty and contemplation.

It seems to me that the weakest soul, even the one that is most blameworthy, is the one that has the best grounds for hope. By forgetting itself and throwing itself into the arms of God, it glorifies Him and gives Him more joy than by all its falling back upon self, and all the self-examination that makes it live within its infirmities, while all the time it possesses at the centre of itself a Saviour who wills to purify it every moment.

Always love prayer, and when I say prayer, I don't mean so much imposing on yourself a lot of vocal prayers to be recited every day, as much as that elevation of the soul towards God through all things that establishes us in a kind of continual communion with the Holy Trinity by quite simply doing everything in Their presence.

Those who practice prayer should have a special affection for him (St. Joseph) always. I do not know how anyone can think of the Queen of the Angels, during the time that she suffered so much with the Child Jesus, without giving thanks to Saint Joseph for the way he helped them. If anyone cannot find a master to teach him how to pray, let him take this glorious saint as his master and he will not go astray.

My prayer almost always consists of an intimate conversation with Our Lord. I imagine that like Magdalene I am at His feet, listening to Him. He tells me what I must do to please Him.

The more you feel your weakness, your difficulty in being recollected, the more the Master seems to hide Himself, the more you should rejoice, for then you are giving Him something, and is it not better to give than to receive, when one loves?

There is much to fathom in Christ, for He is like an abundant mine with many recesses of treasures, so that however deep people go they never reach the end ... but rather in every recess find new veins with new riches everywhere.

Before the divine fire is introduced into and united to the substance of the soul through a person's perfect and complete purgation and purity, its flame, which is the Holy Spirit, wounds it by destroying and consuming the imperfections of its bad habits. And this is the work of the Holy Spirit, in which He disposes it for the divine union and transformation in God through love.

The spirit of God does not dwell in a soul that is not frank, whose lips agree not with her heart.

On another day the Lord told me this: Do you think, daughter that merit lies in enjoyment? No, rather it lies in working and suffering and loving...When you see My Mother holding Me in her arms, don't think she enjoyed those consolations without heavy torment. From the time Simeon spoke those words to her, My Father gave her clear light to see what I was to suffer.

In spite of all her wisdom she (Mary) asked the angel: How can this be? But after he answered. The Holy Spirit will come upon you; the power of the Most High will overshadow you, she engaged in no further discussion. As one who had such great faith and wisdom, she understood at once that if these two intervened, there was nothing more to know or doubt.

We object when He hands us the chalice of His suffering. It is so difficult for us to resign ourselves to suffering. To rejoice in it strikes us as heroic. What is the value of our offering of self if we unite ourselves each morning only in word and gesture, rather than in thought and will, to that offering which we, together with the Church, make of Him with whom we are in the one body?