Let us then not be ashamed to confess our sins unto the Lord. Shame indeed there is when each makes known his sins, but that shame, as it were, ploughs his land, removes the ever-recurring brambles, prunes and thorns, and gives life to the fruits which he believed were dead. Follow him who, by diligently ploughing his field, sought for eternal fruit: 'Being reviled we bless, being persecuted we endure, being defamed we entreat, we are made as the offscouring of the world' (Luke 13:7). If you plough after this fashion you will sow spiritual seed. Plough that you may get rid of sin and gain fruit. He ploughed so as to destroy in himself the last tendency to persecution. What more could Christ give to lead us on to the pursuit of perfection, than to convert and then give us for a teacher one who was a persecutor?
Patience reigns quietly and fruitfully in the life of the man who does not harm or endanger anyone, who is content with little and is obedient to the commandments of the Heavenly Father.
Go, sell all that belongs to you and give it to the poor and taking up the cross, deny yourself; in this way you will be able to pray without distraction.
But, say the saints, now that you recognize the darkness in your own heart and the weakness of your flesh, you lose all desire to pass judgment on your neighbor. Out of your own darkness you see the heavenly light that shines in all created things reflected the clearer: you cannot detect the sins of others while your own are so great. For it is in your eager striving for perfection that you first perceive your own imperfection. And only when you have seen your imperfection, can you be perfected. Thus perfection proceeds out of weakness.
The enemy is within ourselves. An invisible war is taking place within us. If interior evil is defeated, then the external, weaker, foe will surrender.
But there is hardly anything more serious than to be joined in marriage to a stranger (i.e., to an unbeliever), where the instigations both of lustful appetite and of disharmony and the shameful crimes of sacrilege are welded together. For if marriage itself needs to be sanctified by the priestly veil and blessing, how is it possible to speak of a marriage where there is no agreement in faith?
Temptations are sent for improvement when God delivers his righteous ones to various temptations, humiliating them for some slight and unimportant offense, or to increase their purity, in order that every uncleanliness of thought, or... dross which He sees they have harbored in secret, may be burnt away in this present life, and that so He may bring them, as it were pure gold, to the future judgment...
A prayer offered while one has any cause to reproach a fellow man is an impure prayer. There is only one whom the praying person may and must reproach, and that is himself. Without self-reproach, your prayer is as worthless as it is while you are reproaching someone else in your heart. Perhaps you ask: How can one learn this? The answer is: One learns it through prayer.
Rivalry over material possessions has made us forget the counsel of the Lord, who urged us to take no thought for earthly things, but to seek only the kingdom of heaven (cf. Matt. 6:33).
Mary's life should be for you a pictorial image of virginity. Her life is like a mirror reflecting the face of chastity and the form of virtue. Therein you may find a model for your own life... showing what to improve, what to imitate, what to hold fast to.
Go, sell all that belongs to you and give it to the poor and taking up the cross, deny yourself; in this way you will be able to pray without distraction.
Cultivate patience. Patience is a heavenly gift, a gift from the Heavenly Father... With patience, and love for your fellow men, you become a victor in life's continual trials.
A worker takes the trouble to get hold of the instruments that he requires. He does so not simply to have them and not use them. Nor is there any profit for him in merely possessing the instruments. What he wants is, with their help, to produce the crafted objective for which these are the efficient means. In the same way, fasting, vigils, scriptural meditation, nakedness and total deprivation do not constitute perfection but are the means to perfection. They are not in themselves the end point of a discipline, but an end is attained to through them.
