Inward Emptiness

You must make in yourself a great emptiness of all that is not God, and apply yourself seriously to
exclude anything that might be an obstacle to the descent of the divine Paraclete in your hearts.

The Nothing and the All

Let us labour energetically to make Jesus reign in our hearts, and to this end let us annihilate
ourselves; it is the only way to make Him the possessor of our hearts.

Pious Fantasy

The interior life is not what one thinks or imagines. It consists not in having beautiful thoughts, nor
in saying beautiful words, nor in remaining in a passive kind of prayer without applying one's mind,
as if one were in lofty heights. All of this is, more often than not, no more than fantasy.

The interior life is found in the solid practice of mortification, in the love of littleness and in total
detachment from oneself and from creatures.

Death to Self in Little Things

If you are entering religious life to belong more to God, enter disposed at every moment to
sacrifice. Providence will offer you very frequent occasions for this, without taking into account the
things that will happen with the express purpose of putting you to the test. You will not be
mortified in big things; the little things are more often the cause of our pain. At times a word will
be harder for you to bear, not much is needed to make you suffer.

Expect Unexpected Things

Consider that God alone is, and that what He wants from a victim is that she should abandon herself
to Him even to the the complete loss of herself. When we consecrate ourselves to God as victims, I
assure you that we don't know what we are doing: if it pleases the Lord to accept our sacrifice,
something which will not fail to happen when the soul does this in His Spirit, the soul must resolve
to accept unexpected things.

Pure Abandonment

All the nerve of the interior life is in this pure abandonment, which is neither seen, nor intuited,
nor felt: it really is a state of death, in which one must resist in spite of nature and the cry of self-
love.

Recourse to Mary Most Holy

One day, finding myself in great suffering and having no one to whom I could open my heart, I
turned to the Holy Mother of God in these terms: "O Most Holy Virgin, have you brought me here to
let me die? Would it not have been better to leave me in the world, given that here I do not find
here the means to serve God with more holiness and purity? You see that I do not know to whom I
ought to have recourse to teach me my duties, I have no one, and I know neither how to pray nor
how to make mental prayer. Be for me, I pray you, a mother and a teacher. Teach me all that I
must know."

A Really Bad Monastic Day

Everything tires me, everything bothers me. The most inoffensive words irritate me, and I am
finding it hard even to put up with myself. How can I do always the same thing, always at the same
hour, in the same way, what enslavement!

Filled Full with Holiness and Love of Christ

Let me know You, O divine Jesus. Lift the veil of our shadows: let the torch of faith make me
penetrate the holiness and the love contained in Your holy mysteries, and let my soul be penetrated
by these to the point that no creature may be able to occupy it.

Mystical Death
It is necessary to lose all, this I see well, but my interior nature seeks to rest at least the tips of my
feet so as to catch a breath. Oh, how rare it is, this total death! It is necessary to die and to be
buried in Him who triumphs and is glorified in the death of His creatures. It is necessary that I die
even to helpful things, to the light and to all that would be to me even the slightest support.

Eucharistic Prayer

They speak to me often of prayer, but I never hear anyone speak of the Most Holy Sacrament. Is
there perhaps another mean to attain to God other than the Holy Eucharist? Is not the Holy
Eucharist God Himself?

Pride

Pride is the source of all our faults and also of all our misfortunes.