First thing in the morning, prepare your heart to be at peace;
then take great care throughout the day to call it back to that peace frequently.
If you happen to do something that you regret, be neither astonished nor upset,
but humble yourself quietly before God and try to regain your gentle composure.
Say to yourself, "There, we have made a mistake, but let's go on now and be more careful."
I have no doubt that God is holding you by the hand;
if He allows you to stumble it is only to let you know that if He were not holding your hand,
you would fall.
When you are inwardly peaceful,
don't miss the opportunity to perform as many acts of gentleness as you can,
and as frequently as you can, no matter how small these acts may seem;
for, as our Lord says,
"To the person who is faithful in little things, greater ones will be given."
Staying in God's presence and placing ourselves in God's presence are, to my mind, two different things.
In order to place ourselves in His presence we have to withdraw ourselves from every other object
and make it attentive to that presence at this very moment.
But once we are there, we remain there,
as long as either our intellect or our will is active in regard to God.
I think we remain in God's presence even while we are asleep,
because we fall asleep in His sight, as He pleases, and according to His will.
When we wake up we find Him still there, close by.
He has not moved, nor have we; evidently we have stayed in His presence,
but with our eyes closed in sleep.
May Jesus be always in our hearts and live and rule there for all eternity;
may His holy name and that of His glorious mother be ever blessed.
In prayer, be careful not to intellectualize.
Approach the beloved object of your prayer with your affections quite simply and as gently as you can. Naturally, every now and then your intellect will make an effort to apply itself.
Don't waste time trying to guard against this; be content simply to return to acts of the will.
Let us pray God to make His will known to us and to dispose our will
to want nothing except by and through His.
Then let us remain at peace, without hurry or agitation in our hearts.
You would like it always to be spring or summer;
but here below we need winter so that we may practice self-denial and
countless small but beautiful virtues that can be practiced during a barren season.
Humility and charity are the master virtues; all the others are attached to them.
We need only to hold onto these two; one is at the very bottom and the other at the very top.
The preservation of the whole building depends on its foundation and its roof.
I don't want a devotion that is bizarre, confused, neurotic, strained and sad,
but rather a gentle, attractive, peaceful piety;
in a word, a piety that is quite spontaneous and wins the love of God first of all,
and after that, the love of others.
God does not want you to have control over your faith, your hope, and your charity,
nor to have use of them, except just enough to live on and to draw from in times of absolute necessity.
We must continue to cut from our lives all that is superfluous and worldly.
No one prunes vines by hacking them with an axe but by cutting them very carefully
with a pruning hook, one shoot at a time.
We cannot possibly arrive in a day where we aspire to be.
We have to take this step today; tomorrow another; and thus, step by step,
achieve self-mastery, which is no small victory.
Be very careful about what may offend your neighbor and do not reveal any secret that could be to his disadvantage; if you happen to do so, repair the injury as far as you can immediately.
The best prayer is that which keeps us so occupied with God that we don't think about ourselves or about what we are doing.
Each day has its own burdens to bear; do not worry about tomorrow, for the same God who reigns today will reign tomorrow. Remain at peace.
Abstain from long periods of prayer (I don't consider half an hour long!), and from very detailed and long, drawn-out imaginings; these should be simple and short and serve only to move the affections; affections then move us to resolutions, resolutions to actions, and action to the accomplishment of God's will.
Keep yourself constantly in God's presence.
Avoid anxieties and worries, for nothing so impedes our progress toward perfection.
Place your heart in our Lord's wounds gently, and not by force; have the utmost confidence that in His mercy and kindness He will not forsake you.
Yet, for all that, do not relax your hold on His holy cross.
Patience is the one virtue which gives greatest assurance of our reaching perfection, and while we must have patience with others, we must also have it with ourselves.
Trees bear fruit only because of the presence of the sun, some sooner, some later.
Some every year, some every three years. We are very fortunate to be able to remain in the presence of God; so let us be content that He will make us bear our fruit either sooner or later, every day or only occasionally according to His good pleasure.
Find out what God wants and when you know, try to carry it out cheerfully or at least courageously; not only that, but we must love this will of God and the obligations it entails because whatever God chooses for us, it should be all the same to us.
Little by little train your will to follow God's will, wherever it may lead you; see that your will responds quickly when your conscience says: God wants this.
Persevere in overcoming yourself in the little everyday frustrations that bother you; let your best efforts be directed there.
God wishes nothing else of you at present, so don't waste time doing anything else.
Don't sow your desires in someone else's garden; cultivate your own!
Desire to be thoroughly what you are.
Direct your thoughts to being very good at that and to bearing the crosses, little or great, that you will find there.
We all love what is according to our taste; few like what is according to their duty or to God's liking.
Many people make a mistake because they prepare themselves only for major afflictions and remain totally without defense when it comes to small ones.
Major afflictions rarely happen; little ones come up every day: the inconveniences encountered from the moods of those I am with or the pressing spiritual demands which my work brings me and which arise a hundred times a day.
We are weak creatures and scarcely do anything well; but God, who is infinitely kind, is satisfied with our small achievements and very pleased with the preparation of our heart when it plans to honor God and serve our neighbor.
The freedom of the children of God who know they are loved is the detachment of the human heart from all things so that it is free to follow the known will of God.
Don't lose any opportunity, however small, of being gentle toward everyone.
Work diligently, but gently - gently because a tense diligence is harmful both to our heart and to our task.
