"If you fall not merely seven times, but even ten and a hundred, you are not to lose your peace and confidence in God, but humble yourself sweetly with a loving sorrow and a sorrowing love. A word or two is sufficient; God will teach you. Here is the short way to consume imperfections. Say that you are drawn by God to interior recollection in that divine solitude and sacred silence of faith and love, rich with every good. Then you find yourself wounded by some imperfection or dissipation of spirit. Then why not flee immediately into the bosom of the Highest Good with a loving flight of faith, losing yourself entirely in God with a loving and peaceful sorrow and allowing what is imperfect to be consumed in that immense furnace of charity? Acting in this way, not only are the imperfections consumed, but also you are reborn in the Divine Word, Christ Jesus, to a new godlike life, and the soul is divinized." (From a letter of St. Paul of the Cross to Sister Maria Innocenza of the Sorrowful Mother, November 5, 1757)
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