A most powerful and efficacious remedy for all evils, a means of correcting all imperfections, of triumphing over temptation, and preserving our hearts in an undisturbed peace, is conformity with the will of God.
–Saint Vincent de Paul (1581-1660)
What does God hate or punish except self-will? Let self-will cease, and there will be no hell. On what does that fire feed except on self-will?
–Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)
As a drop of water poured into wine loses itself, and takes the color and savor of wine; or as a bar of iron, heated red-hot, become like fire itself, forgetting its own nature; or as the air, radiant with sun-beams, seems not so much to be illuminated but to be light itself; so in the saints all human affections melt away by some unspeakable transmutation into the will of God… The human substance will endure, but in another beauty, a higher power, a greater glory.
–Saint Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)
Be peaceful within yourself, and heaven and earth will be at peace with you. Be diligent to enter into the treasury that is within you, and you will see the treasury of Heaven: for these are one and the same, and with one entry you will behold them both. The ladder of the Kingdom is within you, hidden in your soul. Plunge deeply within yourself, away from sin, and there you will find steps by which you will be able to ascend.
–Saint John Climacus (c. 525-606)
Those who have abandoned themselves to God always lead mysterious lives and receive from God exceptional and miraculous gifts by means of the most ordinary, natural and chance experiences in which there appears to be nothing unusual. The simplest sermon, the most banal conversations, the least erudite books become the source of knowledge and wisdom to these souls by virtue of God’s purpose. This is why they carefully pick up the crumbs which clever minds tread underfoot, for to them everything is precious and a source of enrichment.
–Jean-Pierre de Caussade (1675-1751)
In the measure that a man dies to himself and grows out of himself, in the same measure does God, who is our Life, enter into him.
–Johannes Tauler (1300–1361)
