This is the reason why we have no ease of heart or soul, for we are seeking our rest in trivial things, which cannot satisfy, and not seeking to know God, almighty, all-wise, all-good. He is true rest.
–Saint Julian of Norwich (1342-1416)
Our natural will is to have God, and the good will of God is to have us, and we may never cease willing or longing for God until we have him in the fullness of joy. Christ will never have his full bliss in us until we have our full bliss in him.
–Saint Julian of Norwich (1342–1416)
All of us experience a wonderful mixture of both well-being and woe. It is necessary for us to fall. If we did not fall, we would have the wrong idea about ourselves. Eventually we will understand that we are never lost to God’s love. At no time are we ever less valuable in God’s sight. Through failure we will clearly understand that God’s love is endless nothing we can do will destroy it.
–Saint Julian of Norwich (1342- c. 1420)
I was filled full of everlasting assurance, powerfully secured without any pain or fear. This experience was so happy spiritually that I felt completely at peace and relaxed; there was nothing on earth that could have disturbed me. But this lasted only for a short time, and then I was changed and I began to act with a sense of loneliness and depression and the futility of life itself, so that I hardly had the patience to continue living. No comfort or relaxation now, just ‘faith, hope and love’, and truly I felt very little of this. And yet soon after this our blessed Lord gave me once again that comfort, so pleasant and sure, so delightful and powerful, that there was no fear, no sorrow, no pain, physical and spiritual that could bother me. And then again I felt the pain; then the joy and pleasure; now the one and now the other, again and again… This vision was shown to teach me to understand that some souls profit by experiencing this, to be comforted at one time, and at another to be left to themselves. God wishes us to know however that he keeps us safe at all times, in sorrow and in joy.
–Saint Julian of Norwich (1342-1416)
The fruit we ought to get from prayer, is to do what is pleasing to the Lord.
–Saint Philip Neri (1515-1595)
When the soul has arrived at the attainment of the general light [contemplation]… she should not remain contented, because, as long as you are pilgrims in this life, you are capable of growth, and he who does not go forward, by that very fact, is turning back.
–Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380)
