You desire that it should always be spring in your soul, but that cannot be. We must endure vicissitudes of weather interiorly as well as exteriorly. It is only in heaven that we shall find the perpetual beauty of spring, the perpetual ripening of summer, the perpetual fruition of autumn. There we shall have no winter; but here winter is required for the exercise of abnegation, and a thousand little virtues which are practised in times of sterility.
220.
My God! We shall soon be in eternity, and then we shall see how unimportant are all the things of this world, and how little it mattered whether they were accomplished or not. Yet we are as anxious about them now as if they were affairs of great importance.
221.
Verily, we do not like crosses if they are not of gold enamelled, and adorned with precious stones.
222.
I am sad and will not speak; this is what parrots do. I am sad, but I speak because charity requires it; thus do spiritual persons. I am despised and I get angry; peacocks and monkeys act thus. I am despised and I rejoice; thus did the Apostles.
223.
Examine whether your heart pleases God?—you must not do it;—but whether his pleases you? yes, truly, for if you look at his Heart, it cannot but please you, it is so sweet, so condescending, so loving towards frail creatures when they recognise their misery, so merciful to the miserable, so kind to the penitent....