Breath of Life

“When we can see our poverty and fallibility shot through with God’s love, and can integrate them into our prayer, then we are finally reconciled with ourselves and become more authentic people.”

“In the end you leave with empty hands, that I know; and it is well. At that moment you look at the crucified one and go. What comes is the everlasting mystery of God.”

“God is today. He is not yesterday. He is not tomorrow.”

“I was able to offer my feelings of failure to our Lord, vaguely understanding that this would please him more than if everything had gone swimmingly and I had emerged with flying colours.”

“Oh, to become a pure pool like the Virgin, water that lost the semblances of water and was a sky like God.”

“Unless we are anchored in something beyond the here and now, chances are we will drown in the present moment. . . . In my experience, the extraordinary people I have known and admired all have had the same secret: they prayed.”

“Prayer is essentially God’s work. Our part is to give time, do our best to keep attention, surrender ourselves as best we can. Then we can be sure that God works. Faith does not ask for signs, for tokens. When we really grasp that prayer is essentially God’s business, not ours, we will never talk of failure, no matter how unsatisfactory prayer seems to us.”

“When God is communicating himself to the soul, the mind’s natural field of vision has too narrow a range, and we have to engage by believing, not by focusing. Were faith to open us merely to a world of sharper ideas or more vivid impressions, then its light would indeed look bright. As it opens us to God, its light blinds us. Faith, then, is dark, not because God is distant, but because he is eye-close, soul-close.”

“The deepest reason why so few of us are saints is because we will not let God love us.”  

“O souls, created for these grandeurs and called to them! What are you doing? How are you spending your time?”