It is important to have a daily time of prayer to Jesus. That is your part. It is up to Jesus then to give the grace to make your time fruitful. And no doubt he sometimes does so by making us feel empty. We do not know the workings of God. We have put forth the effort and that is what Jesus loves. Success or failure is up to him, and we really don’t know in prayer what success or failure is. I do not use my time trying to figure out where I am on the spiritual journey. I don’t worry about myself at all. I just praise Jesus and thank him. The older I get, the more mysterious life is. I cannot begin to figure it out, or what God is doing with me. I don’t understand myself. I never will. It is vain to try to explain the unexplainable and the attempt is consuming time that could be used in giving glory to God. I look on myself simply as a little vigil light trying to burn faithfully. My little flicker of light is praising God. That is what life is for.

– Father Rawley Myers

Jesus showed me a robe which he called, “the robe of innocence.” It was whiter than snow. He put it on me saying, “With this, I am taking from you forever all ill will.”. . .Then, opening to me his adorable Heart and putting me within it, he said, “This will be the place of your present and continual dwelling.” Since then I have always seen and found myself in this lovable Heart in a way I do not know how to explain, unless by saying that sometimes it was as though I were in a beautiful garden with flowers growing all around; at other times like a minnow in a vast ocean, or like gold being purified in a crucible. But usually it is like a furnace of pure love.

– St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

Humility is perpetual quietness of heart. It is to have no trouble. It is never to be fretted, or vexed, or irritated, or disappointed. It is to expect nothing, to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me. And when I am blamed and despised, it is to have a blessed home within myself, where I can go in and shut the door, and kneel to my Heavenly Father in secret, and be at peace, as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and about is trouble.

– Thomas T. Carter

Look at the trees of the forest. See how sturdy andbeautiful they are, how tall they grow, and how smooth is their bark. Yet when we plant a garden, we prefer other kinds of trees, such as pomegranate and olive trees. This is because we want trees that bear fruit. We are the trees which God has planted in his garden. He is not concernedat how sturdy and beautiful we are, at how tall we grow, or at how smooth our skin is. As trees in his garden, he isconcerned only that we bear fruit. And the fruit which he wants us to bear is spiritual: peace and love, faith andgentleness, patience and self-control, generosity and loyalty . . . He has planted us on this earth not for our ownsakes, but for his glory; and we can only glorify him by the spiritual fruits that grow in our souls.

– St. John Chrysostom

Jesus lives in us and suffers in us and through us. He accompanies us through our companionship with one another and reaches out to others through our witness. Jesus knows who I am and who he wills me to be. He knows the secret of why I was created. He knows my sins. He knows how to heal me of them, how to draw me to himself, how to make me the adopted son that I am meant to be in him for all eternity. And so my joys and sufferings are his infinitely wise, uniquely crafted, and tender love through which he shapes my life and leads me to my destiny. . . At the heart of life, of every moment of life, is companionship with the merciful God.

– John Janaro

We should attach no importance either to the events of this life or to material things; they are the dreams of a night spent at an inn, and will vanish as quickly as images seen in dreams, leaving no more traces than they do . . . We must see things as they are, in the great light of the faith which illumines our thoughts with daylight so bright that we see things with an eye very different from that of poor souls tied to the world. Like faith itself, the habit of seeing things in the light of faith raises us above the mists and mud of this world. At every moment of our lives, in time and in eternity, we must live by faith, believing in what grace leads us to hope for, expecting to possess it in glory, loving Him who will be ‘our infinite reward.’
– Blessed Charles de Foucauld

A New Book from Padre Pio Devotions:
They Walked with God Book 2: St. Teresa of Calcutta, St. Maximilian Maria Kolbe, St. John Bosco

It’s true Lord that you are always thinking of us. From the beginning of time, before we existed, even before the world existed, you have been dreaming of me, thinking of me, loving me. And it is true that your love created me. It’s true Lord, that you have conceived for my life a unique destiny. It’s true that you have an eternal plan for me, a wonderful plan that you have always cherished in your heart, as a father thinks over the smallest detail of the life of his little one, still unborn. It’s true that, always bending over me, you guide me to bring your plan about, light on my path and strength for my soul. You the divine Attentive One, you, the divine Patient One, you the divine Present One, see that at no time I forget your presence. I don’t ask you to bless what I myself have decided to do, but give me the grace to discover and to live what you have dreamed for me.

– Father Michel Quoist

Whenever things go wrong, the first casualty is always hope. It is fragile, like rare cut glass. We can lose it so easily. St. Paul tells us that, for those who follow Christ, there is Someone who protects and saves our hope; the Father of Jesus. St. Paul tells us that our hope is safe with God. It is well beyond any damage that can be afflicted by human disaster or natural cataclysm. God truly holds our hope and guards it.

– Father Harry Cronin, C.S.C.

Man’s great, true hope which holds firm in spite of all disappointments can only be God – God who has loved us and who continues to love us “to the end,” until all “is finished.” Whoever is moved by love begins to perceive what “life” really is. Life in its true sense is not something we have exclusively in or from ourselves; it is a relationship. And life in its totality is a relationship with Him who is the source of life. If we are in relation with Him who does not die, who is Life itself and Love itself, then we are in life. Then we “live.”

– Pope Benedict XVI

What precisely is our purpose? If we do not know the answer, we are wearing ourselves out for nothing. A traveler without a route suffers all the exhaustion of his journey and gets nowhere. The aim of our journey is the kingdom of God, the kingdom of Heaven. And our purpose must be purity of heart, for without this, no one will gain the kingdom. Let us fix our mind on purity of heart; this will plot our path and enable us to run straight ahead, confident of where we are heading. And if our thoughts sometimes stray, let us return to this purity at once. This one aim will set us on a straight path, so that all our effort will contribute to our single goal.

– . St. John Cassian