Having settled ourselves into the coziness of the present life surrounding ourselves with all the comforts of our many vices and being well attached to them –this is what we wish for– we ask for many things from God, we pray again and again expecting and believing that God will help us, to –of all things– manage this life here. That’s not a correct relationship with God.
The correct relationship involves surrendering yourself to God without reservations or second thoughts.
Once God gets hold of you, He will make you struggle. God doesn’t play with you. These things aren’t funny. We can’t tear ourselves from evil that easily. Man must force himself, must be hurt.
Saints are humble, but they speak the truth. The more humble someone is, the more he speaks the truth; he flatters no one as if he wanted to fool him.

If other people give me a hard time with their guilty actions towards me and these create a state of hell within me, it is because my own guilt, which I don’t recognize and don’t even want to see, lurks inside me.
The minute someone sees his own guilt, confesses it and accepts the redemptive grace of God, even if the whole world blames him –being guilty against him–, they aren’t going to take away from him the paradise and joy the Lord gives.
What a child needs is understanding, love, sympathy, and support –and there shouldn’t be any talk of any flaws the child may have. If parents behave in this way, some serious flaws of the child will disappear after a short time.

When you feel that God loves you and then you love God and everybody, there is nothing that can affect you. Here lies the secret of life. When you say that you love God and you are ready to blame the others, to quarrel with them, to glare at them, your love towards God is questionable.
No matter what another person may have done against us –even on purpose or too provocatively– we should consider things from the standpoint of his salvation.
The Lord is personally concerned with you in order to sanctify you. It’s up to you to be living every minute of your life before His very eyes.
It is of great importance to have the sense that God is present at every moment of your life, at every situation you find yourself in. This thought helps you live carefully.

Can’t we apply something of the Gospel? At least we should humble ourselves!
“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me”. If you pay attention to the meaning of these words, you will humble yourself, become honest and sincere before God.
You wake up in the morning? Don’t only think that up until the previous night nothing had happened with you, that you had failed completely, but say instead: “Today a new day has dawned. Hereby, my God, I am making a new start. I am coming to you. Today I am coming back to you. Take me under your wing”.
From the minute you wake up to the minute you go to sleep, and from the minute you go to sleep to the time you wake up, you should have this feeling: the feeling of God’s presence. That’s what God wants: our heart and our whole being turned towards Him. That’s what pleases God.

Love towards God is surrendering your soul to God, dashing to God with all your might and devotion. That’s exactly what life is.
True love never lets you lose yourself in another person, nor does it let you drift apart.
Christians who live in this world love all people. They don’t give somebody preference over somebody else, nor make exceptions. They love all and are persecuted by all, as the Epistle to Diognetus says.
The more you feed the enemy in you, the old man, and the more you take care of him, the less you are a man of God. The best sustenance for the old man is self-love.
Real evil is the evil in us. It is not the evil committed against us by others.

Each and every one of us should do serious work in themselves to find out where they make concessions, what they succumb to, to what extent they are attracted by sin and cut these things out for good.
Do you get angry? You should cut your anger out for good. Do you make allowances for your egoism? You should cut it out for good. Are you all over the place, maybe not doing sinful things, and tarry? Cut all this out once and for all.
How many times has it been that we have seen ourselves “explode” or get furious? We can’t explain it because we don’t want to see more deeply, we don’t want to see where this explosion, this anger comes from. You see a quiet man and once you touch his weak point, he flies off the handle. Is this virtuous? Obviously we have to rely upon God’s love, upon His providence, in order to decide to cut sin out for good.

The main characteristic of Christ’s family –the circle of His disciples– was love, true love. When there is true love, then there are true relationships among people. But true love is given only by God.
Through the intercessions of all saints, may God help and illuminate us and let us wake up and make a new beginning not tomorrow but today, this moment. “Now I have begun!”
It is one thing to act as a good man trusting your own judgment, but it is entirely another to allow God to act through you.
Lord doesn’t grant us spiritual gifts until he is certain that we aren’t going to hold on to these gifts in a way which would make us lose Him.