The Complete Works: Volume One
“In the heaven of her soul, the praise of glory has already begun her work of eternity.” p. 86
“In what peace, in what recollection Mary lent herself to everything she did! How even the most trivial things were divinized by her!” p. 87
“Where there is often not originality of thought, there is an originality of heart and of contemplative gaze.” p. 89
“How good faith is; it is Heaven in darkness.” p.91
“Remain in Me, not for a few moments, a few hours which must pass away, but “remain…” permanently, habitually. Remain in Me, pray in Me, adore in Me, love in Me, suffer in Me, work and act in Me.” p. 95
*“…so must we descend daily this pathway of the Abyss which is God; let us slide down this slope in wholly loving confidence. ‘Abyss calls to abyss’. It is there in the very depths that the divine impact takes place, where the abyss of our nothingness encounters the Abyss of mercy, the immensity of the all of God. There we will find the strength to die to ourselves and, losing all vestige of self, we will be changed into love…” p. 95
“The kingdom of God is within you.” Awhile ago God invited us to ‘remain in Him,’ to live spiritually in His glorious heritage, and now He reveals to us that we do not have to go out of ourselves to find Him: “The kingdom of God is within”!…St. John of the Cross says that “it is in the substance of the soul where neither the devil nor the world can reach” that God gives Himself to it; then “all its movements are divine, and although they are from God they also belong to the soul, because God works them in it and with in.” p.95
“Since love is what unites us to God, the more intense this love is, the more deeply the soul enters into God and the more it is centered in Him.” p. 96
“No longer ask for the Master among those on earth or in Heaven, for He is your soul and your soul is He.” p. 96
*“Hurry and come down, for I must stay in your house today.” The Master unceasingly repeats this word to our soul which He once addressed to Zacchaeus. “Hurry and come down.” But what is this descent that He demands of us except an entering more deeply into our interior abyss? This act is not “an external separation from external things,” but a “solitude of spirit,” a detachment from all that is not God.” p. 96
*”The Master once more expresses His desire to dwell in us. ‘If anyone loves Me’! It is love that attracts, that draws God to His creatures: not a sensible love but that love ‘strong as death that deep waters cannot quench’. ‘Because I love My Father, I do always the things that are pleasing to Him’. Thus spoke our holy Master, and every soul who wants to live close to Him must also live this maxim. The divine good pleasure must be its food, its daily bread; it must let itself be immolated by all the Father’s wishes in the likeness of His adored Christ. Each incident, each event, each suffering, as well as each joy, is a sacrament which gives God to it; so it no longer makes a distinction between these things; it surmounts them, goes beyond them to rest in its Master, above all things. It “exalts” Him high on the “mountain of its heart”, yes, “higher than His gifts, His consolation, higher than the sweetness that descends from Him’. ‘The poverty of love is never to seek self, to keep back nothing, but to give everything to the one it loves’. ‘Blessed the soul that loves’ in truth; ‘the Lord has become its captive through love.” p. 97
*”I die daily.” I decrease, I renounce self more each day so that Christ may increase in me and be exalted; I “remain” very little “in the depths of my poverty.” I see “my nothingness, my misery, my weakness; I perceive that I am incapable of progress, of perseverance; I see the multitude of my shortcomings, my defects; I appear in my indigence.” “I fall down in my misery, confessing my distress, and I display it before the mercy” of my Master. “Quotidie morior.” I place the joy of my soul (as to the will, not sensible feelings) in everything that can immolate, destroy, or humble me, for I want to make room for my Master. I live no longer I, but He lives in me: I no longer want “to live my own life, but to be transformed in Jesus Christ so that my life may be more divine than human,” so that the Father in bending attentively over me can recognize the image of His beloved Son in whom He has placed all His delight.” p. 98
“But such is the mystery of the divine swiftness that He is continually coming, always for the first time as if He had never come; for His coming, independent of time, consists in an eternal “now”, and an eternal desire eternally renews the joys of the coming. The delights that He brings are infinite, since they are Himself.” p. 100
“He wants to consume our life in order to change it into His own; ours, full of vices, His, full of grace and glory and all prepared for us, if only we will renounce ourselves.” p. 100
“Thus even in this life faith gives us God, covered, it is true, with a veil but nonetheless God Himself.” p. 101
“If your eye is single, your whole body will be full of light. What is this single eye of which the Master speaks but this ‘simplicity of intention’ which ‘gathers into unity all the scattered forces of the soul and unites the spirit itself to God’.” p. 102
“I call simplicity of intention that which seeks only God and refers all things to Him.” p. 102
“The simple soul, ‘rising by virtue of its interior gaze, enters into itself and contemplates in its own abyss the sanctuary where it is touched’ by the touch of the Holy Trinity.” p. 102
*”…in the beginning was nothing, for God in His eternal solitude already carried us in His thought. ‘The Father contemplates Himself; in the abyss of His fecundity, and by the very act of comprehending Himself He engendered another person, the Son, His eternal Word. The archetype of all creatures who had not yet issued out of the void eternally dwelt in Him, and God saw them and contemplated them in their type in Himself. This eternal life which our archetypes possessed without us in God, is the cause of our creation.” p. 103
*”How do we satisfy the desires of God’s gaze but by remaining ‘simply and lovingly’ turned towards Him so that He may reflect His own image as the sun is reflected through a pure crystal.” p. 104
“Our aptitude for receiving His grace depends on the inner integrity with which we move towards Him.” p. 104
“Now this is not fully realized unless the intellect is completely enlightened by knowledge of God, the will captivated by love of the supreme good, and the memory fully absorbed in contemplation and enjoyment of eternal happiness. And as the glory of the blessed is nothing else than the perfect possession of this state, it is obvious that the initial possession of these blessings constitutes perfection in this life. To realize this ideal we must keep recollected within ourselves, remain silently in God’s presence, while the soul immerses itself, expands, becomes enkindled and melts in Him, with an unlimited fullness.” p. 104
*”Let us lovingly eat this bread of the will of God. If sometimes His will is more crucifying, we can doubtless say with our adored Master: ‘Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me by,’ but we will add immediately: ‘Yet not as I will, but as You will’; and in strength and serenity, with the divine Crucified, we will also climb our calvary singing in the depths of our hearts and raising a hymn of thanksgiving to the Father. For those who march on this way of sorrows are those ‘whom he foreknew and predestined to be conformed to the image of His divine Son,’ the One crucified by love!” p. 106
“Thus all the joys which the soul receives are so many reminders inviting her to enjoy by preference the good she already possesses and to which nothing else can compare. ‘Our Father Who art in Heaven…’ It is in ‘this little heaven’ that He has made in the center of our soul that we must seek Him and above all where we must remain.” p. 108
*”The Lord, in His mercy, willed to turn our sins against themselves to our advantage; He found a way to make them useful for us, to convert them in our hands into a means of salvation. But do not let this diminish in any way our horror of sinning, nor our sorrow for having sinned. But our sins ‘have become a source of humility for us’. P. 109
*”That is why humility, like charity, is always capable of increasing. Since a humble heart is the vessel needed, the vessel capable of containing the grace God wants to pour into it, let us be humble. The humble can never rank God high enough nor themselves low enough. But here is the wonder: their weakness turns into wisdom, and the imperfection of their acts, always insufficient in their eyes, will be the greatest delight of their life. Whoever possesses humility has no need of many words to be instructed; God tells him more things than he can learn; such was the case with the Lord’s disciples.” p. 109
“If anyone wants to follow Me, let him take up his cross and deny himself. But this doctrine which seems so austere, takes on a delightful sweetness when we consider the outcome of this death – life in God in place of our life of sin and misery.” p. 125
*”The freest soul, I think, is the one most forgetful of self. If anyone were to ask me the secret of happiness, I would say it is to no longer think of self, to deny oneself always. That is a good way to kill pride: let it starve to death!” p. 125
*”The thought pursues me and I confess that I experience a profound inner joy in thinking that God has chosen to associate me in the passion of His Christ. This way of Calvary I climb each day seems to me more like the path of Beatitude!” p. 126
“We must become aware that God dwells within us and do everything with Him, then we are never commonplace, even when performing the most ordinary tasks, for we do not live in these things, we go beyond them! A supernatural soul never deals with secondary causes but with God alone.” p. 127
“As for me, I feel already as if I were almost in heaven here in my little cell, alone with Him alone, bearing my cross with my Master. Framboise, my happiness increases along with my suffering! If you only knew how delicious the dregs are at the bottom of the chalice prepared by my Heavenly Father!” p. 128
*”Beatitude attracts me more and more; between my Master and me that is all we talk about, and His whole work is to prepare me for eternal life.” p. 131
“He has substituted me for Himself on the cross. But it is moving to rediscover in the bride climbing to Calvary with her crucified King…the love hidden in the Cross. He makes her understand that her dreams of union will find their realization in suffering.” p. 135
“I no longer know anything, I do not want to know anything except ‘to know Him, to share in His sufferings, to become like Him in His death.” p. 141
“In your silence will your strength be. It seems to me, therefore, that to keep one’s strength for the Lord is to unify one’s whole being by means of interior silence, to collect all one’s powers in order to ‘employ’ them in the one work of love, to have this single eye which allows the light of God to enlighten us. A soul that debates with its self, that is taken up with its feelings, and pursues useless thoughts and desires, scatters its forces, for it is not wholly directed toward God.” p. 142
“Such was the Creator’s dream: to be able to contemplate Himself in His creatures and see reflected there all His perfections, all His beauty as through a pure and flawless crystal. Is not that a kind of extension of His own glory? The soul, by the simplicity of the gaze which fixes on its divine object, finds itself set apart from all that surrounds it, set apart also and above all from itself.” p. 144
“If I want my interior city to have some similarity and likeness to that of the King of eternal ages and to receive this great illumination from God, I must extinguish every other light and, as in the holy city, the Lamb must be its only light.” p. 145
“What does it matter to the soul that is absorbed in recollection of the light which these words create in it, whether it feels or does not feel, whether it is in darkness or light, whether it enjoys or does not enjoy. It feels a kind of embarrassment in making any distinction between these things; and when it still feels affected by them, it holds itself in deep contempt for its lack of love and quickly looks to its Master that He might set it free.” p. 145
“This soul must be resolved to share fully in its Master’s passion.” p. 146
“She no longer feels ‘hunger or thirst,’ for in spite of her consuming desire for Beatitude, she is satisfied by this food which was her Master’s: the will of the Father. She no longer feels the heat of the sun, that is, she no longer suffers from suffering.” p. 147
“That is why these souls are virgins, that is, free, set apart, stripped; free from all save their love, set apart from everything, especially themselves, stripped of all things both in the supernatural order as well as in the natural order.” p. 148
“They fall down and adore, they cast down their crowns…First of all the soul should ‘fall down,’ should plunge into the abyss of its nothingness, sinking so deeply into it that in the beautiful expression of a mystic, it finds “true, unchanging, and perfect peace which no one can disturb, for it has plunged so low that no one will look for it there. Then it can ‘adore’. Adoration, ah! That is a word from Heaven! It seems to me it can be defined as the ecstasy of love. It is love overcome by the beauty, the strength, the immense grandeur of the Object loved, and it ‘falls down in a kind of faint’ in an utterly profound silence, that silence of which David spoke when he exclaimed: ‘Silence is Your praise!’ Yes, this is the most beautiful praise since it is sung eternally in the bosom of the tranquil Trinity; and it is also the ‘last effort of the soul that overflows and can say no more…” p. 150
“We have only to strip off self to follow it as God wills! To strip off self, to die to self, to lose sight of self.” p. 152
*”Come die in Me that I may live in you!” p. 152
“Never to let myself be ruled by impressions, by the first impulses of nature, but to let the will gain self-mastery…And for this will to be free, it must be, in the expression of a pious writer, ‘enclosed in God’s will’. Then I will be ‘moved by His Spirit’, as St. Paul says. I will do only what is divine, only what is eternal, and, like my Unchanging One, I will live even here below in an eternal present.” p. 155
“It is there that He will give me “access to the Father” and will keep me as still and as peaceful in His presence as if my soul were already in eternity. It is by the Blood of His Cross that He will make peace in my little heaven, so that it may truly be the repose of the Three. He will fill me with Himself; He will bury me with Him; He will make me live again with Him, by His life: ‘Mihi vivere Christus est’! And if I fall at every moment, in a wholly confident faith I will be helped up by Him.” p. 156
“To walk in Jesus Christ seems to me to mean to leave self, lose sight of self, give up self, in order to enter more deeply into Him with every passing moment, so deeply that one is rooted there.” p. 156
“…’that which is mortal is swallowed up by life.’ The soul thus stripped of self and clothed in Jesus Christ has nothing more to fear from exterior encounters or from interior difficulties, for these things, far from being an obstacle, serve only to root it more deeply in the love of its Master. Through everything, despite everything, the soul can adore Him always because of Himself.” p. 157
“And now what does it mean to be built up in Him? The prophet also sings ‘He has set me high upon a rock, now my head is held high above my enemies who surround me’; I think that this can well be taken as a figure of the soul built up in Jesus Christ. He is that rock on which it is set high above self, the sense and nature, above consolations and sorrows, above all that is not Him alone. And there is complete self-control, it overcomes self, it goes beyond self and all else as well.” p. 157
“Father, I thank You! My Master sang this in His soul and He wants to hear the echo of it in mie!” p. 157
“First of all, what did He say when He came into the world? ‘Here I am, O God, I come to do your will’. I think that this prayer should be like the bride’s heartbeat: ‘Here we are, O Father, we come to do your will!” p. 158
*”And then she will joyfully go in peace to every sacrifice with her Master, rejoicing to ‘have been known’ by the Father since He crucifies her with His Son.” p. 159
“And by never leaving Him, by remaining in closest contact with Him, she will radiate ‘this secret power’ which saves and delivers souls. Stripped and set free of self and all else, she can follow the Master to the mountain to pray there with Him in her soul, ‘a prayer to God’.” p. 159
“Finally, after having said so often, ‘I am thirsty’, thirsty to possess you in glory.” p. 159
“The Virgin kept all these things in her heart: her whole history can be summed up in these few words! It was within her heart that she lived, and at such a depth that no human eye can follow her.” p. 160
“…for with her everything took place within!…Oh! How beautiful she is to contemplate during her long martyrdom, so serene, enveloped in a kind of majesty that radiates both strength and gentleness…She learned from the Word Himself how those must suffer whom the Father has chosen as victims, those whom He has decided to associate with Himself the great work of redemption…” p. 160
“The Blessed Virgin is again there to teach me to suffer as He did, to tell me, to make me hear those last songs of His soul which no one else but she, His Mother, could overhear.” p. 161
“This is the mystery my lyre sings of today! My Master has said to me as to Zacchaeus: ‘Hurry and come down, for I must stay in your house today…’ Hurry and come down, but where? Into the innermost depths of my being: after having forsaken self, withdrawn from self, been stripped of self, in a word, without self. ‘I must stay in your house’! It is my Master who expresses this desire! My master who wants to dwell in me with the Father and His Spirit of love, so that, in the words of the beloved disciple, I may have ‘communion’ with Them.” p. 161
“It is not life that abandons the soul, but rather the soul that scorns this natural life and withdraws from it….For it feels that this life is not worthy of His rich essence so it dies and flows into its God.” p. 162