“My God!You are with us. You told Primo Maestro

not to be afraid.I am not afraid and in spite of my wretched

condition, my sins and shortcomings, I want to remain with you always.

My God, you are always thinking about me. You are within me….

You surround me.I am written on the palm of your hand.”

Toward the Heights of Pauline Mysticism

“To allow myself to be drawn by the Lord…“To love him in all simplicity and to move steadily toward union with him….”“To live in Jesus Christ.”“To savor his continual presence in my soul: from there, he speaks, comforts, sanctifies.”“To remain in him serenely in times of light and also in times of darkness.”

“To live in intimacy with the Divine Master: mind, will, heart, activities, senses, hands, feet, eyes, hearing–everything for him and with him.

“To reach the point of ‘It is no longer I who live but Jesus who lives in me.’”

“To remain serenely and trustingly with the Lord, reflecting on the fact that he loves me and I love him.”

“My Jesus, I want you alone–nothing else.”

“Surrender…to reach the point of total self-detachment.”

Holy Year 1933: Spiritual Exercises aimed at Progress

“For you, this Holy Year should be a year of progress–the year in which you become a saint. You are now beginning your 40th year of life. How many invitations you have received from the Lord to lead a more perfect life! Do you want to go ahead forever as you are now? Do you have the courage to appear before the judgment seat of God in your present condition? Now that the Lord is once more inviting you, offering you his grace, you can’t say no. The Lord wants you to be holy. He is giving you the graces for this. Woe to you if you do not correspond to them!“With the help of the Lord, with his grace, I want to become a saint–a great saint–and quickly!”

Holy Year 1950-1951

“Will I finish this year? I don’t know. I want to live all the minutes, hours, days and months of it for God–for HIM alone.

I renounce my own will so as to have only the will of God.

I renounce my preferences, my way of seeing things, so as to prefer what God prefers.

I want to do everything for him–for him alone.

May my life be an ongoing “Magnificat” for the many graces I have received. May it be a continual adoration [of God].”

The Gospel scenes that drew her more powerfully and conquered her spirit were: the Visitation, in which she contemplated how “the Blessed Mother, who had just received Jesus into her most pure womb, hastened to take him to her cousin”; Bethlehem, which attracted her because of the humility and poverty of the manger and the love of the Father, who gave us Jesus; and Nazareth, where Jesus, in his hidden life, was always united to the Father and where Mary “continually meditated on the words of Jesus, which she preserved in her heart.”

A powerful and constant strivingA powerful and constant striving

“to reach complete

transformation in Christ”

(1963). 

“I want to reach the point that it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.”

“I want to become a saint by doing the will of God at all times and in

everything. Does he want me to be

sick? FIAT. Tempted? FIAT. Contradicted?

FIAT.

“Always and everywhere: not

what pleases me, but what pleases

you, my God.”

“May my thoughts and affections be always more humble and united to those of Jesus.“To unite myself to him; to transform myself in him.”

“May my thoughts and affections be always more humble and united to those of Jesus.“To unite myself to him; to transform myself in him.”