The Great Secret of Sanctity

'Sanctity consists essentially in union with God, 

and in the love with which we perform daily actions.  

The great secret of sanctity consists in loving much,

but this love presupposes an interior and daily warfare - 

a warfare against our unruly appetites and our self-will, 

a warfare waged by prayer which softens the heart, 

and by its sweetness, compensates for the bitterness

inseparable from mortification.'

(from Sheltering the Divine Outcast, compiled by A Religious, The Peter Reilly Co, Philadelphia, 1952, p. 99)

William Paxton painting