April 30th.  Do not quarrel . . . with your lot in life.  Do not complain of its never-ceasing cares, its petty environment, the vexations you have to stand, the small and sordid souls you have to live and work with.  The Greatest Thing in the World.

May 1st.  The moment the new life is begun there comes a genuine anxiety to break with the old.  For the former environment has now become embarrassing.  It refuses its dismissal from consciousness.  It competes doggedly with the new Environment for a share of the correspondences.  And in a hundred ways the former traditions, the memories and passions of the past, the fixed associations and habits of the earlier life, now complicate the new relation.  The complex and bewildered soul, in fact, finds itself in correspondence with two environments, each with urgent but yet incompatible claims.  It is a dual soul living in a double world, a world whose inhabitants are deadly enemies, and engaged in perpetual civil war.  Natural Law, Mortification, p. 179.

May 2d.  How can the New Life deliver itself from the still-persistent past?  A ready solution of the difficulty would be to die. . . .  If we cannot die altogether, . . . the most we can do is to die as much as we can. . . .  To die to any environment is to withdraw correspondence with it, to cut ourselves off, so far as possible, from all communication with it.  So that the solution of the problem will simply be this, for the spiritual life to reverse continuously the processes of the natural life.  Natural Law, Mortification, p. 180.

May 3d.  The spiritual man having passed from Death unto Life, the natural man must next proceed to pass from Life unto Death.  Having opened the new set of correspondences, he must deliberately close up the old.  Regeneration in short must be accompanied by Degeneration.  Natural Law, Mortification, p. 181.

May 4th.  The peculiar feature of Death by Suicide is that it is not only self-inflicted but sudden.  And there are many sins which must either be dealt with suddenly or not at all.  Natural Law, Mortification, p. 183.

May 5th.  If the Christian is to “live unto God,” he must “die unto sin.”  If he does not kill sin, sin will inevitably kill him.  Recognizing this, he must set himself to reduce the number of his correspondences—­ retaining and developing those which lead to a fuller life, unconditionally withdrawing those which in any way tend in an opposite direction.  This stoppage of correspondences is a voluntary act, a crucifixion of the flesh, a suicide.  Natural Law, Mortification, p. 182.

May 6th.  Do not resent temptation; do not be perplexed because it seems to thicken round you more and more, and ceases neither for effort nor for agony nor prayer.  That is your practice.  That is the practice which God appoints you; and it is having its work in making you patient, and humble, and generous, and unselfish, and kind, and courteous.  The Greatest Thing in the World.