“Energy apparently increases with the amount of work to be done. When nothing of burning urgency is waiting, it decreases much sooner. Heaven seems to understand such economy.”

The deeper one is drawn into God, the more one must ‘go out of oneself’; that is, one must go to the world in order to carry the divine life into it.

Those who join the Carmelite Order are not lost to their near and dear ones, but have been won for them, because it is our vocation to intercede to God for everyone.

The motive, principle, and end of the religious life is to make an absolute gift of self to God in a self-forgetting love, to end one’s own life in order to make room for God’s life.

Usually one gets a heavier cross when one attempts to get rid of an old one.

Just take everything exactly as it is, put it in God’s hands and leave it with Him.

Everywhere the need exists for maternal sympathy and help.

Each woman who lives in the light of eternity can fulfill her vocation, no matter if it is in marriage, in a religious order, or in a worldly profession.

Do not accept anything as love which lacks truth.

Woman naturally seeks to embrace that which is living, personal, and whole. To cherish, guard, protect, nourish and advance growth is her natural, maternal yearning.

The woman’s soul is fashioned as a shelter in which other souls may unfold.

The Bread that we need each day to grow in eternal life, makes of our will a docile instrument of the Divine Will; sets the Kingdom of God within us; gives us pure lips, and a pure heart with which to glorify his holy name.

There is no profession which cannot be practiced by a woman.

The nation doesn’t simply need what we have. It needs what we are.

Every true prayer is a prayer of the Church; by means of that prayer the Church prays, since it is the Holy Spirit living in the Church, Who in every single soul ‘prays in us with unspeakable groanings’.

Anyone who seeks truth seeks God, whether or not he realizes it.

The limitless loving devotion to God, and the gift God makes of Himself to you, are the highest elevation of which the heart is capable; it is the highest degree of prayer. The souls that have reached this point are truly the heart of the Church.

Love is the burning point of life, and since all life is sorrowful, so is love. The stronger the love, the more the pain. Love itself is pain, you might say -the pain of being truly alive.

And as I gave up the fight to leave the forever in my heart behind, I made friends within the hellfire beast that will always burn a little too close whilst you remain out of reach.

I was born to a dad who was born in the South Bronx while the Bronx was burning, while landlords were committing arson to their own buildings.

I met you the way a fast car meets a tree. The slightest slip sent me careening into you. Half-conscious I remained at the scene, bones broken, blood spilled, fire burning.

Find a place inside where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.

Better do a good deed near at home than go far away to burn incense.

Karma means that all actions have consequences. Grace means that in a moment of atonement -taking responsibility, making amends, asking for forgiveness – all karma is burned.

Certainly one cannot ban cross burning in the sanctity of his bedroom.