Live joyously, my dearest daughters, in the midst of your holy occupations. When the atmosphere is heavy in the midst of aridity, labour independently of your heart by the practice of a holy abjection and humility.
285.
We shall never possess perfect sweetness and complete charity, if they be not exercised in spite of repugnance, aversion, and disgust. True peace does not consist in not combating but in conquering.
286.
It should be a source of humiliation to us that we are so little master of ourselves, and so fond of our ease. Our Saviour did not come to seek his ease or comfort, either spiritual or temporal, but to deny, to combat Himself, and to die.
287.
Do not allow yourself to yield in any way to sadness, which is the enemy to devotion. What, then, should sadden a soul which serves Him who shall be our joy forever?
288.
Our Lord revealed to Blessed Angela that there is no good so pleasing to Him as that which is done by force; that is, the good which a resolute will effects and offers Him by working against the weight of the flesh, and the repugnances in the inferior part of the soul, and in spite of sadness, aridity, and interior desolation.