172. Unles you mortify yourself, you'll never be a prayerful soul.
173. The appropriate word you left unsaid; the joke you didn't tell; the cheerful smile for those who bother you; that silence when you're unjutly accused; your kind conversation with people you find boring and tactless; the daily effort to overlook one irritating detail or another in those who live with you...this, with perseverance, is indeed solid interior mortification.
174. Don't say, "That person botehrs me." Think: "That person sanctifies me."
175. No Ideal becomes reality without sacrifice. Deny yourself. It is so beautiful to be a victim!
176. How many times do you resolve to serve God in something and then have to content youself - you are so weak - with offering him that frustarted feeling, the feeling of having failed to keep that easy resolution!
177. Don't miss a chance to "give in". It's hard - but how pleasing in the eyes of GOd!
178. Whenever you see a poor, wooden cross, alone, uncared for, worthless... and without a corpus, don't forget that that cross is your cross - the everyday hidden cross, unattractive and unconsoling - the cross that is waiting for the corpus it lacks: and that corpus must be you.
179.Choose mortifications that dont mortify others.
180.Where there is no mortification, there is no virtue.
181. Interior mortification. I don't belive in your interior mortification if I see that you despise mortification of the senses - that you don't practice it.
182. In our poor present life, let us drink to the last drop from the chalice of pain. What does it matter to suffer for ten, twenty, fifity years, if afterwards there is Heaven for ever, forever....forever!
And above all - even better that for the sake of the reward, propter retributionem - what does suffering matter if we accept it to console, to please God our Lord, with a spirit of reparation united with him on His cross - in a word, if we suffer for Love?
183. The eyes! Through them much wickedness enters into the soul. How many experiences like David's!
If you guard your eyes, you will be assured of guarding your heart.
184. Why should you look around you, if you carry "your world" within you?
185. The world admires only the spectacular sacrifice, becasue it does not realize the value of the sacrifice that is hidden and silent.
186. We must give ourselves in everything, we must deny ourselves in everything. Our sacrifice must be a holocaust.
187. Paradiox: To live, one must die.
188. Remember that the heart is a traitor. Keep it locked with seven bolts.
189. Everything that doesn't lead you to God is an obstacle. Tear it out and cast it far from you.
190. A soul whose immediate superior was bad tempered and irritable was moved by God to say, " Thank you, my God, for this trult divine treasure. Where would I find naother to repay each kindness with a kick?"
191. Conquer yourself each day form the very first moment, getting up on the dot, as a set time, without granting a single minute to laziness.
If, with the help of God, you conquer yourself in that moment, you'll have acomplised a great deal for the rest of the day.
It's so discouraging to find yourself beaten in the first skirmish!
192. YOu always come out beaten. resolve, each time to work for the salvation of a particular soul, or his sanctification, or his vocation to the apostolate. If you do so, I'll be sure of your victory.
193. Don't be "namby pamby"! That's not the way I want you. It's time to get rid of that peculiar pity that you feel for yourself.
194. I'm going to tell you which are man's treasures on earth so you won't slight them: hunger, thirst, heat, cold, pain, dishonour, poverty, lonliness, betrayal, slander, prison...
195. Its true, whoever said it, that the soul and body are two enemies that cannot be separated, and two friends that cannot get along.
196. The body must be given a little less than it needs. Otherwise it will turn traitor.
197. If they have witnessed your weaknesses and faults, does it matter if they witness your penance?
198. if the grain of wheat does not die, it remains unfruitful. Don't you want to be a grain of what, to die through mortification, and to yeild stalks rich in grain? May Jesus bless your wheatfiled!
199. These are the savoury fruits of the mortified soul: tolerance and undersatnding toward the defects of others; intolerance toward his own.
200. You don't conquer youself, you aren't mortified becasue you are proud. YOu lead a life of penance? remeber: pride can exist with penance.
Futhermore: Your sorrow, after your falls, after your failures in generosity, is it really sorrow or is it the frustration of seeing yourself so small and weak?
How far you are from Jesus if you are not humble...even if new roses blossom every day from your disciplines!
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