There is no affliction, trial, or labor difficult to endure, when we consider the torments and sufferings which Our Lord Jesus Christ endured for us.
Teresa Of AvilaRead
To converse with You, O King of glory, no third person is needed, You are always ready in the Sacrament of the Altar to give audience to all. All who desire You always find You there, and converse with You face to face
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes a personal and direct relationship with the divine without intermediaries.
Teresa of Avila expresses the intimate connection individuals can have with God through prayer and the sacrament of the altar. She reassures that one does not need a mediator to engage with the divine, as God is always present and ready to listen, inviting believers to converse directly and meaningfully with Him.
In practice
This quote could be used in a sermon to illustrate the availability of God's presence during prayer.
There is no affliction, trial, or labor difficult to endure, when we consider the torments and sufferings which Our Lord Jesus Christ endured for us.
How often I failed in my duty to God, because I was not leaning on the strong pillar of prayer.
What friends or kindred can be so close and intimate as the powers of our soul, which, whether we will or no, must ever bear us company?
If we do not use great care to mortify our will, there are many things which can deprives us of the holy freedom of spirit that we are seeking in order to fly more freely to our Creator, without always being bogged down with the clay of this earth. Moreover, there can never be solid virtue in a soul that is attached to its own will.
I say the same of humility and of all the virtues; the wiles of the devil are terrible, he will run a thousand times round hell if by so doing he can make us believe that we have a single virtue which we have not. And he is right, for such ideas are very harmful, and such imaginary virtues, when they come from this source, are never unaccompanied by vainglory; just as those which God gives are free both from this and from pride.
Patience attains All that it strives for. He who has God Finds he lacks nothing: God alone suffices.
Never allow anything that divides or destroys the oneness of your life with Christ to remain in your life without facing it.
People think of faith as being something that you don't really believe, a device in helping you believe simply it. Of course that is quite wrong. As Pascal says, faith is a gift of God. It is different from the proof of it. It is the kind of faith God himself places in the heart, of which the proof is often the instrument... He says of it, too, that it is the heart which is aware of God, and not reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not be reason.
O Holy Spirit of God, abide with us; inspire all our thoughts; pervade our imaginations; suggest all our decisions; order all our doings. Be with us in our silence and in our speech, in our haste and in our leisure, in company and in solitude, in the freshness of the morning and in the weariness of the evening; and give us grace at all times humbly to rejoice in Thy mysterious companionship.
I believe that the greatest form of prayer is praise to God.
We rarely think of the air we breathe, yet it is in us and around us all the time. In similar fashion, the presence of God penetrates us, is all around us, is always embracing us.
We pray not to inform God or instruct Him but to beseech Him closely, to be made intimate with Him, by continuance in supplication; to be humbled; to be reminded of our sins.
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