It is a great mistake, as we have already remarked, to be afraid of Him and to act in His presence like a timid and craven slave trembling with fright before his master.

St. Jerome declares that he holds for certain, and has learned from experience, that he will never make a good end who has led a bad life to the very last: 'This I hold, this I have learned by much experience, that his will be an evil end who has always led an evil life.'

There is a practice that is most powerful in keeping us united with God. That practice is the constant recollection of His presence.

Woe to those who despise devotion to Mary! ... The soul cannot live without having recourse to Mary and recommending itself to her. He falls and is lost who does not have recourse to Mary.

Before the coming of Jesus Christ, men fled away from God and, being attached to the earth, refused to unite themselves to their Creator. But the loving God has drawn them to Himself by the bonds of love, as He promised by the prophet Osee [Hosea]: "I will draw them with the cords of Adam, with the bonds of love" (11:4). These bonds are the benefits, the lights, the calls to His love, the promises of Paradise which He makes to us, but above all, the gift which He has bestowed upon us of Jesus Christ in the Sacrifice of the Cross and in the Sacrament of the Altar.

New revelations regarding faith or morals ... have always been abhorred and challenged in the Church ... Hence, the Sovereign Pontiffs, the Councils, and the Fathers have been most careful to reject all novelties or new doctrines on matters of faith which differed from those already received.

Certainly amongst all devotions, after that of receiving the sacraments, that of adoring Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament holds first place, is most pleasing to God, and most useful to ourselves. Do not then, O devout soul, refuse to begin this devotion; and forsaking the conversation of men, dwell each day, from this time forward, for at least half or quarter of an hour, in some church, in the presence of Jesus Christ under the sacramental species. Taste and see how sweet is the Lord.