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...we render God the most true and acceptable service by caring only for His honor and glory and forgetting ourselves, our advantages, comfort and happiness. How can we be self-oblivious, while keeping ourselves under such strict control that we are afraid to move, or even to think, or to leave our minds enough liberty to desire God's greater glory and to rejoice in the glory which He possesses? When His Majesty wishes the mind to rest from working He employs it in another manner, giving it a light and knowledge far above any obtainable by its own efforts and absorbing it entirely into Himself. Then, though it knows not how, it is filled with wisdom such as it could never gain for itself by striving to suspend the thoughts.

Love suffers neither delay nor repose, being always eager to suffer for the Beloved.

I can boast only of His mercy, and since I cannot cease being what I have been, I have no other remedy than to approach His mercy and to trust in the merits of His Son and of the Virgin, His Mother.

The entire trinity rests within us, this whole mystery that will be our vision in Heaven.

A soul united to Jesus and identified with him can do everything. It seems to me that this can be reached only by prayer.

We should never fear the battle when the good of our neighbor is involved.

Now let us talk about the detachment we ought to have, for detachment, if it is practiced with perfection, includes everything. I say it includes everything because if we embrace the Creator and care not at all for the whole of creation, His Majesty will infuse the virtues. Doing little by little what we can, we will have hardly anything else to fight against; it is the Lord who in our defense takes up the battle against the demons and against the world.

Perfection does not lie in the virtues that the soul knows it has, but in the virtues that our Lord sees in it. This is a closed book; hence one has no reason for presumption, but must remain prostrate on the ground with respect to self.

True love grows by sacrifice and the more thoroughly the soul rejects natural satisfaction, the stronger and more detached its tenderness becomes.

Oh, how powerful over souls is the apostle who remains always at the Spring of living waters; then he can overflow without his soul becoming empty, since he lives in communion with the Infinite!

Nothing shows forth the love which the Heart of God bears for us as does the Eucharist. It means union, consummation, He in us and we in Him. Is not that heaven on earth, heaven in faith, while we await the face to face vision for which we so yearn? Then, when His glory appears, we shall be satisfied when we see Him in His light. Do you not find that it rests the soul to think about that meeting with Him whom we love supremely? Then all else vanishes and we feel that already we are penetrating into the Mystery of God!

To endure all things with a calm and untroubled mind not only brings many blessings to the soul, but also enables us to have clear judgement about them, and to take appropriate steps for their betterment.