Death is the post-house of the journey.

A lifetime may be needed merely to gain the virtues which annul the errors of man's preceding life.

First comes the life of suffering, whose tortures create a thirst for love.

Next the life of love and devotion to the creature, teaching devotion to the Creator,--a life where the virtues of love, its martyrdoms, its joys followed by sorrows, its angelic hopes, its patience, its resignation, excite an appetite for things divine.

Then follows the life which seeks in silence the traces of the Word; in which the soul grows humble and charitable.