Breath of Life

“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.”

“It should be known that if anyone is seeking God, the Beloved is seeking that person much more.”

“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?”

“Whatever the past, or my fears of the future, here and now, O Holy Spirit, utter within me the total ‘Yes’ of Jesus to the Father.”

“The most profound expression we can give to faith is to set aside an inviolable time each day, no matter how short, when we deliberately affirm God’s absolute love for me here and now and that we stay there in blind trusting faith, receiving it.”