“Henceforth your existence becomes a thing of ceaseless activity; each act has a meaning which connects you with God, just as in love your actions and your thoughts are filled with the loved one.  But love and its joys, love and its pleasures limited by the senses, are but the imperfect image of the love which unites you to your celestial Spouse.  All earthly joy is mixed with anguish, with discontent.  If love ought not to pall then death should end it while its flame is high, so that we see no ashes.  But in God our wretchedness becomes delight, joy lives upon itself and multiplies, and grows, and has no limit.  In the Earthly life our fleeting love is ended by tribulation; in the Spiritual life the tribulations of a day end in joys unending.  The soul is ceaselessly joyful.  We feel God with us, in us; He gives a sacred savor to all things; He shines in the soul; He imparts to us His sweetness; He stills our interest in the world viewed for ourselves; He quickens our interest in it viewed for His sake, and grants us the exercise of His power upon it.  In His name we do the works which He inspires, we act for Him, we have no self except in Him, we love His creatures with undying love, we dry their tears and long to bring them unto Him, as a loving woman longs to see the inhabitants of earth obey her well-beloved.

“The final life, the fruition of all other lives, to which the powers of the soul have tended, and whose merits open the Sacred Portals to perfected man, is the life of Prayer.  Who can make you comprehend the grandeur, the majesty, the might of Prayer?  May my voice, these words of mine, ring in your hearts and change them.  Be now, here, what you may be after cruel trial!  There are privileged beings, Prophets, Seers, Messengers, and Martyrs, all those who suffer for the Word and who proclaim it; such souls spring at a bound across the human sphere and rise at once to Prayer.  So, too, with those whose souls receive the fire of Faith.  Be one of those brave souls!  God welcomes boldness.  He loves to be taken by violence; He will never reject those who force their way to Him.  Know this! desire, the torrent of your will, is so all-powerful that a single emission of it, made with force, can obtain all; a single cry, uttered under the pressure of Faith, suffices.  Be one of such beings, full of force, of will, of love!  Be conquerors on the earth!  Let the hunger and thirst of God possess you.  Fly to Him as the hart panting for the water-brooks.  Desire shall lend you its wings; tears, those blossoms of repentance, shall be the celestial baptism from which your nature will issue purified.  Cast yourself on the breast of the stream in Prayer!  Silence and meditation are the means of following the Way.  God reveals Himself, unfailingly, to the solitary, thoughtful seeker.