Great Throughts Treasury

"It is good for the soul to have no desire to comprehend anything save God alone in hope through faith."

"It is better to be burdened and in company with the strong than to be unburdened and with the weak. When you are burdened you are close to God, your strength, who abides with the afflicted. When you are relieved of the burden you are close to yourself, your own weakness; for virtue and strength of soul grow and are confirmed in the trials of patience."

"Its desired mate on the green banks has found."

"It seems now to the soul that it is going forth from its very self with much affliction. At other times things seem strange and rare, though they are the same that it was accustomed to experience before. The soul is now becoming alien and remote from common sense and knowledge of things in order to be informed with the Divine."

"It is seriously wrong to have more regard for God's blessings than for God himself: prayer and detachment."

"It is not God's will that a soul be disturbed by anything or suffer trials, for if one suffers trials in the adversities of the world it is because of a weakness in virtue. The perfect soul rejoices in what afflicts the imperfect one."

"It practices patience and longsuffering. Four benefits of the dark night: delight of peace, habitual remembrance and thought of God, cleanness and purity of soul, and the practice of the virtues."

"Live as though only God and yourself were in this world, so that your heart may not be detained by anything human."

"Live in the world as if only God and your soul were in it; then your heart will never be made captive by any earthly thing."

"Look at that infinite knowledge and that hidden secret. What peace, what love, what silence is in that divine bosom! How lofty the science God teaches there, which is what we call the anagogical acts that so enkindle the heart."

"Lord God, my Beloved, if you still remember my sins in such a way that you do not do what I beg of you, do your will concerning them, my God, which is what I most desire, and exercise your goodness and mercy, and you will be known through them. And if you are waiting for my good works so as to hear my prayer through their means, grant them to me, and work them for me, and the sufferings you desire to accept, and let it be done. But if you are not waiting for my works, what is it that makes you wait, my most clement Lord? Why do you delay? For if, after all, I am to receive the grace and mercy that I entreat of you in your Son, take my mite, since you desire it, and grant me this blessing, since you also desire that."

"Lord, you return gladly and lovingly to lift up the one who offends you, but I do not turn to raise and honor the one who annoys me."

"Keep spiritually tranquil in a loving attentiveness to God, and when it is necessary to speak, let it be with the same calm and peace."

"Let them trust in God... who will bring them into the clear and pure light of love. This last He will give them by means of that other dark night."

"Let us rejoice, O my Beloved! Let us go forth to see ourselves in Thy beauty, to the mountain and the hill, where the pure water flows: let us enter into the heart of the thicket."

"Let your speech be such that no one may be offended, and let it concern things that would not cause you regret were all to know of them."

"Keep habitual confidence in God, esteeming in yourself and in your Sisters those things that God most values, which are spiritual goods."

"Love is ever throwing out sparks; the effect of love is to wound, that it may enkindle with love and cause delight."

"Mine are the heavens and mine is the earth. Mine are the nations, the just are mine, and mine the sinners. The angels are mine, and the Mother of God, and all things are mine; and God himself is mine and for me, because Christ is mine and all for me. What do you ask, then, and seek, my soul? Yours is all of this, and all is for you. Do not engage yourself in something less or pay heed to the crumbs that fall from your Father's table. Go forth and exult in your Glory! Hide yourself in it and rejoice, and you will obtain the supplications of your heart."

"Many beginners also at times possess great spiritual avarice. They hardly ever seem content with the spirit God gives them. They become unhappy and peevish because they don't find the consolation they want in spiritual things. Many never have enough of hearing counsels, or learning spiritual maxims, or keeping them and reading books about them. They spend more time in these than in striving after mortification and the perfection of the interior poverty to which they are obliged."

"Love consists not in feeling great things but in having great detachment and in suffering for the Beloved."

"More is gained in one hour from God's good things than in a whole lifetime from your own."

"My Beloved is the mountains, the solitary wooded valleys, the strange islands, the roaring torrents, the whisper of the amorous gales; the tranquil night at the approaches of the dawn, the silent music, the murmuring solitude, the supper which revives, and enkindles love."

"Love to be unknown both by yourself and by others. Never look at the good or evil of others."

"Love is the measure by which we shall be judged."

"My Beloved, the mountains, the solitary sylvan valleys, the strange islands, the resounding rivers, the whistle of amorous air, the quiet night on par with the lift of dawn, silent music, sound solitude, the dinner recreates and love."

"My Beloved, all that is rugged and toilsome I desire for myself, and all that is sweet and delightful I desire for you."

"My sole occupation is love. All my occupation now is the practice of the love of God, all the powers of soul and body, memory, understanding, and will, interior and exterior senses, the desires of spirit and of sense, all work in and by love. All I do is done in love; all I suffer, I suffer in the sweetness of love."

"My soul is occupied, and all my substance in His service; now I guard no flock, nor have I any other employment: my sole occupation is love."

"Never allow yourself to pour out your heart, even though it be but for the space of a Creed."

"Never give up prayer, and should you find dryness and difficulty, persevere in it for this very reason. God often desires to see what love your soul has, and love is not tried by ease and satisfaction."

"Never take others for your example in the tasks you have to perform, however holy they may be, for the devil will set their imperfections before you. But imitate Christ, who is supremely perfect and supremely holy, and you will never err."

"My spirit has become dry because it forgets to feed on you."

"Never listen to talk about the weaknesses of others, and if someone complains of another, you can tell her humbly to say nothing of it to you"

"Not all the faculties and senses have to be employed in things, but only those that are required; as for the others, leave them unoccupied for God."

"Now that I no longer desire all, I have it all without desire."

"No matter how much individuals do through their own efforts, they cannot actively purify themselves enough to be disposed in the least degree for the divine union of the perfection of love. God must take over and purge them in that fire that is dark for them, as we will explain."

"O crystal well! Oh that on Thy silvered surface Thou wouldest mirror forth at once those eyes desired which are outlined in my heart!"

"O guiding night! O night more lovely than the dawn! O night that has united the Lover with his beloved, transforming the beloved in her Lover."

"O how gently and how lovingly dost thou lie awake in the depth and centre of my soul, where thou in secret and in silence alone, as its sole Lord, abidest, not only as in Thine own house or in Thine own chamber, but also as within my own bosom, in close and intimate union."

"O Lord, my God, who will seek you with simple and pure love, and not find that you are all one can desire, for you show yourself first and go out to meet those who seek you?"

"O Love?s living flame, tenderly you wound my soul?s deepest center! Since you no longer evade me, will you, please, at last conclude: rend the veil of this sweet encounter! O cautery so tender! O pampered wound! O soft hand! O touch so delicately strange, tasting of eternal life and canceling all debts! Killing, death into life you change! O lamps of fiery lure, in whose shining transparence the deep cavern of the senses, blind and obscure, warmth and light, with strange flares, gives with the lover?s caresses! How tame and loving your memory rises in my breast, where secretly only you live, and in your fragrant breathing, full of goodness and grace, how delicately in love you make me feel!"

"O killing north wind, cease! Come, south wind, that awakenest love! Blow through my garden, and let its odours flow, and the Beloved shall feed among the flowers."

"O Lord, my God, you are no stranger to those who do not estrange themselves from you. How do they say that it is you who absent yourself?"

"O my God and my delight, for your love I have also desired to give my soul to composing these sayings of light and love concerning you. Since, although I can express them in words, I do not have the works and virtues they imply (which is what pleases you, O my Lord, more than the words and wisdom they contain), may others, perhaps stirred by them, go forward in your service and love -- in which I am wanting. I will thereby find consolation, that these sayings be an occasion for your finding in others the things that I lack. Lord, you love discretion, you love light, you love love; these three you love above the other operations of the soul. Hence these will be sayings of discretion for the wayfarer, of light for the way, and of love in the wayfaring. May there be nothing of worldly rhetoric in them or the long-winded and dry eloquence of weak and artificial human wisdom, which never pleases you. Let us speak to the heart words bathed in sweetness and love that do indeed please you, removing obstacles and stumbling blocks from the paths of many souls who unknowingly trip and unconsciously walk in the path of error."

"O mighty Lord, if a spark from the empire of your justice effects so much in the mortal ruler who governs the nations, what will your all-powerful justice do with the righteous and the sinner?"

"O sweetest love of God, so little known, whoever has found this rich mine is at rest!"

"Oh night thou was my guide. Oh night more loving than the rising sun. Oh night that joined the lover to the beloved one transforming each of them into the other."

"Often God communicates to the soul, when it is least expecting it, the purest spiritual sweetness and love, together with a spiritual knowledge which is sometimes very delicate (and cannot be perceived by sense)."

"Oh, how happy is this soul that is ever conscious of God resting and reposing within its breast!"