St Teresa Margaret Redi of the Sacred Heart
“Since nature resists good, even though the spirit may be willing, I resolve to enter upon a continual warfare against self. The arms with which I shall do battle are prayer, the presence of God, silence; yet I am aware how little I am able to use these weapons. Nevertheless I shall arm myself with complete confidence in you, patience, humility and conformity with your divine will … but who shall help me to fight a continual battle against enemies such as those which make war on me? You, my God, have declared yourself my captain; you have raised the standard of the Cross, saying: ‘Take up the cross and follow in my footsteps.’ To correspond with this invitation, I promise to resist your love no longer; rather, I will follow you to Calvary without hesitation.”
“Nobody comes to the Father except through Jesus. To come to God who is everything and consequently all good, no fatigue must seem to us too great; we must not be put off either by the difficulties we meet on the way, but accept bitterness and welcome every kind of cross with eagerness. By these means, which are precisely those of Jesus Christ, it is not difficult to come to the true God, to live in charity, to walk in love.”
St. Teresa of the Andes
‘Sufferings are transformed by faith. The important thing is not to concentrate on the external. We should examine the source from which things are born, and faith will make it known: it’s God’s love which tries, refines and purifies our soul. When you’re suffering, look at Jesus. He is loving you with tenderness, because you are participating in his cross, in the cross He carried in His most divine Heart from Bethlehem to Calvary. Place yourself and everything around you in that Heart of Jesus. Lie abandoned to His holy Will. From that abandonment, oneness with God will be born.’
‘I wish…I could help you find consolation near the Cross. In its shadow, every kind of bitterness fades. No one has suffered like Jesus has and from His cross, He teaches us to bear with every pain in silence and in resignation. From the cross and with open arms, He invites us, saying; “Come to me all you who are burdened under the weight of suffering and I will give you rest.”
St. Teresa of Jesus (of Avila)
‘I repeat my advice, then, and I do not mind how many times I do so. It is most important, I say, that no one should be distressed or afflicted because of aridities or disturbances or distractions in his thoughts. If he wishes to gain freedom of spirit and not always to be troubled, let him begin by not being afraid of the Cross. Then he will see how Our Lord will help him to carry it, and will advance joyfully and gain profit from everything.’
‘..the fundamental means of delivering ourselves from the snares and pleasures that the devil sends is to begin with the determination to desire no pleasures but to walk in the way of the Cross from the very first. For the Lord Himself showed us this way of perfection, when He said: ‘Take up your Cross and follow me’. He is our example, and those who follow His counsel, with the sole desire to please Him, have nothing to fear.’
‘O my true Lord and Glory, the Cross that You have prepared for those who reach this stage is indeed light, yet at the same time it is most heavy! It is light because it is sweet, and heavy because there are times when the soul has no patience left to endure it. Yet it would never wish to be free from that Cross, unless in order to come to You. When it remembers that it has never served You at all, and that by living it may yet do so, it longs for a much heavier burden, and never to die until the end of the world. It values its repose as nothing, compared with doing You some slight service. It does not know what to desire, but well knows that it desires nothing but You.’
‘There may be times when our temperament or some indisposition finds the Passion too painful a subject to be dwelt on. But what can hinder us from being with Him after His Resurrection, since we have Him so near us in the Sacrament, in which He is already glorified? Here we shall not see Him wearied and broken and pouring with blood, as He lies exhausted by the roadside, persecuted by those to whom He was doing good and not even believed in by the Apostles. Certainly one cannot always bear to think of the great trials He suffered. But here He is free from pain, full of glory, strengthening some and bringing courage to others before He ascends into heaven. In the most holy Sacrament, He is our companion, and it would seem impossible for Him to withdraw from us even for a moment.’
‘Come what may, the great thing is to embrace the Cross. The Lord was deprived of all consolation, and forsaken in His trials. Let us not forsake Him; His hand will help us to rise better than our own efforts; and, as I have already said, He will withdraw Himself when He sees that it is good for us and when the Lord wishes to take the soul out of itself.’
St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face
‘Exterior crosses, what are they? … We might be far from each other without suffering, if Jesus were to comfort our souls… What is a real cross is the martyrdom of the heart,the interior suffering of the soul, and this, which no one sees, we shall be able to bear without ever being seperated.’
‘You will have no trouble in loving the Cross and the tears of Jesus if you think often of this saying:”He loved me and He gave Himself up for me!”‘
‘On this earth, where all changes, one single thing remains, and this is the conduct of the King of heaven regarding His friends. Ever since He has lifted up the standard of the Cross, it is under its shadow that all must fight and carry off the victory.’
‘It is the little crosses that are our whole joy; they are more common than big ones and prepare the heart to receive the latter when this is the will of our good Master.’
“One cannot attain the end without adopting the means, and as Our Lord made me understand that it was by the Cross He would give me souls, the more crosses I met with the stronger grew my attraction to suffering.”
“To live a life of love is not to set up our tent on Tabor.
It is to climb Calvary with Jesus and see the Cross as a treasure. “~ St. Therese
St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross
‘Hail Cross, our only hope!’
‘One cannot desire freedom from the Cross when one is especially chosen for the Cross.’
‘The cross has no purpose of itself. It rises on hight an points above. But it is not merely a sign – it is Christ’s powerful weapon; the shepherd’s staff with which the divine David moves against the hellish Goliath; with it he strikes mightily against heaven’s gate and throws it wide open. Then streams of divine light flow forth and enfold all who are followers of the Crucified.’
