On few topics is the voice of the saints as unanimous as on detachment. From the Desert Fathers to 20th-century mystics, across centuries, languages, and schools, the same message returns: the human heart is made for God, and everything that occupies it elsewhere leaves it restless. “You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you,” wrote Saint Augustine at the threshold of his Confessions[1]; twelve centuries later, Saint Teresa of Avila inscribed on her breviary bookmark: “To one who possesses God, nothing is lacking: God alone suffices.”[2] Between these two, the same certainty, expressed in a thousand ways.
This article gathers that voice: what the saints, doctors, and mystics have said about detachment, each with their own emphasis. Saint John of the Cross sang it with the image of the bird held by a thread; Saint Teresa of Avila, with her “God alone suffices”; Saint Ignatius, with his “holy indifference”; Saint Francis de Sales, with his halcyon masters of the sea; Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, daring to detach even from God’s consolations. They are not theorists: they are men and women who have lived what they teach, and that is what gives their words their weight.
This selection does not address the practical “how” — the nature of detachment, its degrees, concrete means to grow in it, and pitfalls to avoid are covered in the article How to Grow in Detachment, to which we refer. Here, we listen to the saints: we read their texts, follow the continuity of their doctrine, and see how each has illuminated a facet of the same diamond. For related themes, see evangelical poverty (detachment applied to possessions), abandonment to God (its filial goal), and charity (the virtue it frees).
Why Listen to the Saints on Detachment?
A Lived Doctrine, Not a Speculation
Detachment is not a thesis to be proven: it is an experience to be undergone. The saints speak with authority because they have paid for it with their lives — John of the Cross in his prison in Toledo, Teresa of Avila founding her penniless convents, Thérèse of Lisieux in the dark night of faith in her final eighteen months. Their words are not moralistic advice but the testimony of travelers returned from the journey. That is why, on this subject more than others, listening to them is better than reasoning alone.
A Remarkable Unanimity
Taken together, their texts compose a single symphony. The same observation — the heart too large for the world — recurs in Augustine as in the author of the Imitation.
This unanimity is no accident: it comes from all listening to the same Master. The saints only amplify a word that is not their own.
All Echoes of the Word of Christ
Before the saints, there is Jesus. Detachment is not an invention of monastic spirituality: it is a demand of the Gospel, posed by Christ himself as a condition of the disciple’s life:
“No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” — Gospel according to Saint Matthew 6:24[3]
And even more radically: “So then, whoever among you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple” (Lk 14:33)[4]. Saint Paul, first of all, drew from his encounter with Christ the consequence that all the saints would echo after him:
“Yes, I consider all this as loss because of the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord. For his sake I have lost all things; I consider all as rubbish, to gain one single advantage, Christ.” — Epistle to the Philippians 3:8[5]
All that the saints say about detachment is but a lived commentary on these words. One can verify this by browsing, century after century, their great chorus.
The Fathers: the ancient root of detachment
Saint Augustine: the restless heart
Everything begins, for the Fathers, with a diagnosis: the human heart is a capacity for God that nothing else can fill. Saint Augustine (354–430) expressed it once and for all, and the whole tradition remembers it:
“You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
— Saint Augustine, Confessions, Book I, ch. 1[6]
If the heart is made for the infinite, then every finite attachment that occupies it leaves it, by definition, restless. Augustine draws from this the law that all his spiritual experience confirms: detachment and the vision of God grow together — one sees God to the extent that one dies to the world, and God hides Himself to the extent that one lives for creatures[7].
Saint John Cassian and the Desert Fathers: purity of heart as the goal
The Egyptian monks made detachment the heart of their asceticism. Saint John Cassian (c. 360–435), who brought their wisdom to the West in his Conferences, distinguishes with decisive precision the goal (scopos) and the end (telos): the ultimate end is the Kingdom, but the immediate goal, without which one cannot reach it, is purity of heart—a heart freed from all disordered attachment:
“Our goal is purity of heart, without which no one can attain [the Kingdom]. […] For this, parents, homeland, honors, riches, worldly delights, any pleasure: all are to be despised by us.”
— Saint John Cassian, Conferences, I[8]
All the ascetic effort of the Fathers thus tends toward a single point: “to always adhere to God and divine things”, and to hold everything else “in second or even last place”[9]. Saint Basil of Caesarea (c. 330–379) expressed the same demand without compromise: “It is impossible to become a disciple of the Lord for one who clings to any thing of this present life.”[10]
Saint Diadochus and Saint Peter Damian: the root of self-love
The Fathers quickly recognized that the last and most tenacious attachment is not to goods but to oneself. Saint Diadochus of Photice (5th century) reduces all detachment to a single reversal:
“He who loves himself cannot love God; he who does not love himself, because of the overflowing richness of divine charity, loves God.”
— Saint Diadochus of Photice, Spiritual Perfection[11]
Saint Peter Damian (1007–1072) adds a physical image: the desire for carnal things no longer has “any space to spread” once one has “placed all one’s desire in God”, for this fire “prevents the love of the flesh from finding the slightest place there”[12]. Detachment, already for the Fathers, is not an emptiness for emptiness’s sake: it is a fire that drives out another.
The Imitation of Christ: the great classic of detachment
No book after the Bible has formed as many Christians in detachment as the Imitation of Christ, this anonymous 15th-century treatise traditionally attributed to Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380–1471). Its strength is to link detachment to present peace: it is not only about meriting Heaven but about finding now the rest of a free heart. Its observation is almost clinical:
“As soon as a man begins to desire something in a disordered way, he immediately becomes restless within himself. The proud and the greedy never have rest; but the poor and humble in spirit live in the abundance of peace.”
— The Imitation of Christ, Book I, ch. 6[13]
The Imitation knows that the hardest part is not leaving things behind, but bending one’s will:
“It is hard to give up one’s habits, but it is even harder to bend one’s own will.”
— The Imitation of Christ, Book I, ch. 11[14]
And it soberly warns that the joys of the senses deceive: “Thus every joy of the senses creeps in gently, but in the end it wounds and kills.”[15] Hence its advice, which sums up the whole book: “Apply yourself therefore to detach your heart from the love of visible things, to carry it wholly toward the invisible.”[16]
Saint John of the Cross: the doctor of detachment
If any saint deserves the title of doctor of detachment, it is Saint John of the Cross (1542–1591), reformer of the Carmel with Saint Teresa of Ávila and Doctor of the Church. His entire Ascent of Mount Carmel is a pedagogy of stripping away, leading the soul through the “dark night” to pure union. He gave detachment its most unforgettable images.
The bird held by a thread
Why detach even from small things? Because a single bond, however slight, is enough to pin the soul to the ground. This is the most famous image in all Christian mysticism:
“What does it matter whether the bird is held by a light thread or by a rope? The thread may be light, but the bird remains caught as if by a rope, and until it breaks it, it cannot take flight.”
— Saint John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book I, ch. 11[17]
The lesson is harsh and liberating: it is not the size of the attachment that matters, but the fact that it holds fast. A tiny habit, a cherished vanity, is enough to prevent flight.
The “nothing” (nada)
At the heart of the Ascent, John of the Cross engraves, at the foot of his drawing of the Mount of Perfection, the doctrine of “nothing” (nada)—a series of paradoxical maxims that are not praise of nothingness but the logic of total love:
“To come to taste the all, have no taste for anything. To come to possess the all, desire to possess nothing. To come to be all, desire to be nothing in anything.”
— Saint John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book I, ch. 13[18]
Whoever desires the All—God—must cease to be content with something. And John of the Cross carefully clarifies that this renunciation is not a sad tightening but an act of love: one renounces the taste for things “for the love of Jesus Christ, who in this life had and wished to have no other taste than to do the will of his Father”[19].
Saint Teresa of Avila: "God Alone Suffices"
Reformer of the Carmelites and Doctor of the Church, Saint Teresa of Avila (1515–1582) combined in her life a fervent affection for her friends with radical detachment—proof that the two are not opposed. In the Way of Perfection, she lists detachment from all created things among the three things she demands of her sisters, alongside mutual love and humility[20]. For her, detachment is not deprivation: it is the condition for giving oneself entirely. If we do everything in our power to detach ourselves from earthly things and turn our desires toward heaven, God will not delay in giving Himself to us generously[21].
She knew from experience how “slow we are to give ourselves entirely to God”: we think we surrender ourselves fully, yet in reality we keep the essential for ourselves[22]. Yet all her teaching is summed up in the prayer she copied and kept in her breviary, which has become one of the pinnacles of the spirituality of detachment:
“Let nothing disturb you, let nothing frighten you; all things pass away, God never changes. Patience obtains all things; whoever has God lacks nothing: God alone suffices.”
— Saint Teresa of Avila, Poetry (“Nada te turbe”)[23]
Saint Ignatius of Loyola: Holy Indifference
Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556) gave detachment its most practical formulation. At the heart of the Principle and Foundation of the Spiritual Exercises, he coined the notion of “holy indifference”: not coldness, but the balanced desire toward everything that is not the ultimate end.
“It is necessary to make ourselves indifferent to all created things […] so that, on our part, we desire neither health more than sickness, riches more than poverty, honor more than dishonor, a long life more than a short one; and likewise for all else, desiring and choosing only what leads us more to the end for which we are created.”
— Saint Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, no. 23[24]
Ignatian indifference is not the absence of preference, but the subordination of every preference to the will of God. It is detachment as a method of discernment: holding the heart in balance so that it may incline only toward the side God indicates.
Saint Francis de Sales: Rich in Possessions, Poor in Affection
Bishop of Geneva and Doctor of the Church, Saint Francis de Sales (1567–1622) popularized a detachment that is practicable in the midst of the world: not renouncing possessions, but ceasing to place one’s heart in them. In the Introduction to the Devout Life, he sharply distinguishes having from attachment:
“To be rich in possessions and poor in affection is the great happiness of the Christian; for by this means he has the conveniences of riches for this world and the merit of poverty for the next.”
— Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, III, 14[25]
He illustrates this with two now-classic images. The first is the halcyons, birds that build their nests on the sea without water ever entering: “Your heart […] must be like this, open only to heaven, and impenetrable to riches […] so that among riches it is without riches and master of riches.”[26] The second, unforgettable, is the apothecary:
“There is a difference between having poison and being poisoned: apothecaries almost all have poisons […], but they are not poisoned because they do not have the poison inside their bodies, but inside their shops; so you can have riches without being poisoned by them: this will be if you have them in your house or purse, and not in your heart.”
— Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, III, 14[27]
Salesian detachment is gentle but demanding: it places poverty of heart within the richness of one’s state, and unmasks avarice, “a prodigious fever that becomes all the more insensible the more violent and ardent it is”[28].
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux: Detaching Even from Consolations
Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus (1873–1897), Doctor of the Church, brought detachment to its finest point. Very young, she understood that creatures cannot fill the heart, and she wrote to her sister Céline as to her cousin Marie with pressing ardour:
“Creatures are too small to fill the immense void that Jesus has made in you; do not give them any place in your soul…” — Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, letter 93 (to Marie Guérin, July 14, 1889)[29]
“Oh! let us leave nothing… nothing in our heart but Jesus!” — Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, letter 89 (to Céline, April 26, 1889)[30]
But her novelty lies elsewhere. Where many stop at detachment from goods, Thérèse dares to detach even from the sweetnesses of God themselves—not seeking the consolations of prayer, but God alone:
“Let us detach ourselves from the earth, fly to the mountain of love where the beautiful Lily of our souls is found… Let us detach ourselves from the consolations of Jesus, to cling to Him!” — Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, letter 105 (to Céline, May 10, 1890)[31]
This is the summit of detachment, which she lived in the dark night of faith in her final months: loving God not for His gifts, but for Himself alone.
Modern Mystics: The Same Voice, Up to Our Time
The chorus did not fall silent with the great doctors. The mystics of the 19th and 20th centuries reiterate, sometimes in fervent terms, the teaching they received.
Marthe Robin: "God Cannot Be Compared in Any Way to Creatures"
Venerable Marthe Robin (1902–1981), founder of the Foyers de Charité, makes detachment the very condition of divine union:
“Complete mortification of the senses, absolute detachment from the created is indispensable for the soul that wishes to reach divine union. […] The created torments and lowers; the Spirit of God purifies and sanctifies.”
— Venerable Marthe Robin, Journal[32]
And she gives the reason, which exactly echoes Augustine: “It is as we detach ourselves from the created that we enjoy divine lights, for God cannot be compared in any way to creatures. He is truly to be pitied, he to whom God is not enough.”[33]
Blessed Conchita: Making Space So Jesus Can Rest
Blessed Conchita Cabrera de Armida (1862–1937), mother and great Mexican mystic, brings detachment back to its positive goal — making room:
“Work tirelessly to acquire this emptiness, so that Jesus can truly come and rest in you! Let us be empty of all that is not God.”
— Blessed Conchita Cabrera de Armida, Life in the Holy Spirit[34]
Luisa Piccarreta: Love Seeks Souls Empty of All
In the spirituality of the Divine Will — living IN the Divine Will is not only doing God's will: it is receiving His Will so that it may live and act in us, as in Adam before the Fall, gift of the third Fiat revealed to Luisa —, detachment takes on a nuptial hue: it is the space that Love comes to occupy. Jesus said this to the Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta (1865–1947) with a striking image:
“Love wants to find souls empty of everything. Otherwise, it cannot envelop them with its garment. […] It can only clothe the soul if it finds it totally empty. Otherwise, disappointed, it must withdraw.”
— Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, vol. 11, August 28, 1912[35]
Detachment, in this light, is not a loss but an exchange: one lets go of the little to receive the All. “You, by wanting nothing, want everything,” Jesus also said to Luisa: “this is the subtlety and cunning of true Love.”[36] And the end of the path joins life in the divine Fiat: “In the measure that you detach yourself from all that is not totally mine, you will become ever more immersed in my absolute Will.”[37]
One Image per Master: The Common Grammar of Detachment
Placed side by side, the great metaphors of the saints form a true grammar of detachment. Each illuminates the same truth from a different angle.
| Master | Image / Formula | What It Teaches |
|---|---|---|
| Saint Augustine | The restless heart | The heart is too large for the world: without God, it does not rest |
| Saint John Cassian | Purity of heart | Detachment is the immediate goal without which one does not reach the end |
| The Imitation | Disordered desire | To desire something out of order is to lose peace immediately |
| Saint John of the Cross | The bird and the thread; the nada | A single bond is enough to prevent flight; for the All, cling to nothing |
| Saint Teresa of Ávila | “God alone suffices” | To one who possesses God, nothing is lacking |
| Saint Ignatius | Holy indifference | Holding desire in balance to choose only God |
| Saint Francis de Sales | The halcyon; the apothecary | Possessing goods without being possessed by them: on them, not in them |
| Saint Thérèse of Lisieux | The mountain of love | Detaching even from consolations, to love only the Giver |
These images never contradict each other: they complement one another. John of the Cross’s bird speaks of urgency; Francis de Sales’s halcyon speaks of the manner; Teresa of Ávila’s “God alone suffices” speaks of the goal. All point toward a heart that is free, ordered, and available for God.
What the Saints Do Not Say: Two Misunderstandings Set Aside
The voice of the saints also corrects two persistent misunderstandings. Detachment, as they teach it, is neither insensitivity nor contempt for creatures.
Detachment Is Not Hardness of Heart
No saint has confused detachment with apathy. The Christ detached from all wept over Jerusalem and at Lazarus’s tomb; Saint Teresa of Ávila loved her friends with ardent affection. True detachment increases the capacity to love because it purifies selfishness. Saint Augustine called the virtue ordo amoris, the order of love: to detach is not to cease loving beings, but to cease loving them more than God or in place of God. A heart that hardens has not detached itself: it has shrunk.
Detachment Is Not Contempt for the Created World
The saints do not curse creation: God saw it as “very good” (Gn 1:31). Detachment does not concern the creatures themselves, but the disorder of our attachment to them. This is the whole meaning of Francis de Sales’s image: one keeps goods “in one’s house or purse, but not in one’s heart”[38]. Maurice Zundel summed up this paradox by reversing the common definition of freedom:
“If I am a slave to myself, I am in the worst slavery! The only freedom is to be free from oneself.”
— Maurice Zundel, Another Look at Man[39]
The unanimous fruit: freedom, peace, God for all
A free heart
All the saints agree on the fruit of detachment: freedom. The unbound soul is no longer tossed about by its desires nor crushed by its losses. Saint Vincent de Paul (1581–1660), the most active of men, experienced this every day:
“If we want to be free, let us mortify our passions; for the very nature of mortification is to give rest to the soul, so that it is always content with what happens to it and neither asks for nor refuses anything.”
— Saint Vincent de Paul, Saint Vincent de Paul by his writings[40]
God for all
The ultimate fruit is that God becomes everything. When the heart clings to nothing, it discovers that it lacks nothing, because it possesses the One who contains all. This is the “God alone suffices” of Teresa of Ávila—not the cry of a man deprived of all, but of a man fulfilled. Jesus gave Luisa Piccarreta a luminous image, where detachment leads to transparency:
“As they strip themselves away, my light fills them and they become transparent like crystal, so that nothing prevents the light of my sun from penetrating them.”
— Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 2, April 26, 1899[41]
Here is the goal toward which all these voices converge: not impoverishment, but fullness—a free heart, filled with light, for whom God alone suffices. To move from listening to the saints to practice, read How to grow in detachment.
For further reading
- How to grow in detachment — the practical path: nature, degrees, concrete means, and pitfalls.
- How to grow in evangelical poverty — detachment applied to material goods.
- How to grow in abandonment to God — the goal of detachment: filial surrender of all to God.
- How to grow in charity — the virtue that detachment frees and expands.
- How to grow in humility — detachment from self and self-esteem.
- The Divine Will — where detachment culminates in living in the Fiat.
Notes and References
Saint Augustine (354–430), Confessions, book I, ch. 1 (“Fecisti nos ad te, et inquietum est cor nostrum, donec requiescat in te”). Latin text reference in Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 27; commonly accepted French translation.
1 6Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515–1582), poem known as “Nada te turbe,” found in her breviary after her death — hence its name “bookmark.” Spanish text: “Nada te turbe, nada te espante, todo se pasa, Dios no se muda; la paciencia todo lo alcanza; quien a Dios tiene, nada le falta: solo Dios basta.” (after The Collected Works of St. Teresa of Avila, trans. Kavanaugh-Rodriguez, vol. 3, ICS Publications, 1985). French edition: Œuvres complètes, Cerf.
2 23Gospel according to Saint Matthew 6:24, official liturgical translation (AELF), text verified word for word on aelf.org. Parallel in Lk 16:13.
3Gospel according to Saint Luke 14:33, official liturgical translation (AELF), text verified word for word on aelf.org. Conclusion of the discourse on the conditions for following Christ.
4Epistle to the Philippians 3:8, official liturgical translation (AELF), text verified on aelf.org. The Greek term skybala (“rubbish”) marks the radical nature of Paul’s choice.
5Paraphrase of the article, not a verbatim quotation: it summarizes the Augustinian doctrine of the restless heart (Confessions, I, 1) and of the degrees by which the soul rises toward Wisdom (On Christian Doctrine, II, 7). The former reference to Book II, ch. 17, which was erroneous, has been removed.
7Saint John Cassian (c. 360–435), Conferences, I, ch. 4 (Conference of Abbot Moses, “On the end and goal of the monk”: the immediate goal — purity of heart — and the ultimate end — the Kingdom) and ch. 6 (“for its sake, parents, homeland, honours, riches…: all are to be despised by us”). French translation cited: Conferences I, Sources Chrétiennes 42 bis, Cerf (pagination of this edition not cross-checked in this audit).
8Saint John Cassian, Conferences, I, ch. 8 (illustration of Martha and Mary), Sources Chrétiennes 42 bis, Cerf (pagination of this edition not cross-checked in this audit): the primary goal is “always to adhere to God and divine things,” all else being secondary or last.
9Saint Basil of Caesarea (c. 330–379), Small Ascetic Collection, Bellefontaine edition, 2013, p. 96 — pagination of the cited edition not cross-checked in this audit.
10Saint Diadochus of Photice (5th century), Spiritual Perfection (One Hundred Chapters on Spiritual Perfection), passage on self-love and love of God (substance confirmed on the English translation of the Philokalia). The chapter number and pagination of the cited edition (Migne, 1990, p. 20) were not cross-checked in this audit.
11Saint Peter Damian (1007–1072), The Monastic Heritage, Saint-Léger Editions, 2020, p. 48 — pagination of the cited edition not cross-checked in this audit.
12The Imitation of Christ, book I, ch. 6, § 1 (Lamennais translation, verified word for word). Anonymous 15th-century work, traditionally attributed to Thomas à Kempis (c. 1380–1471).
13The Imitation of Christ, book I, ch. 11, § 6 (Lamennais translation, verified word for word).
14The Imitation of Christ, book I, ch. 20, § 7 (Lamennais translation, verified word for word): “Thus all joy of the senses creeps in gently, but in the end it wounds and kills.”
15The Imitation of Christ, book I, ch. 1, § 4 (Lamennais translation, verified word for word): “Apply yourself therefore to detach your heart from the love of visible things, to carry it wholly toward the invisible.”
16Saint John of the Cross (1542–1591), The Ascent of Mount Carmel, book I, ch. 11, on the soul held back by the slightest attachment like a bird by a thread. Written around 1579–1585.
17Saint John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, book I, ch. 13 — the maxims of the “nada” (“To come to taste everything…”), engraved at the foot of the drawing of the Mount of Perfection. Original Spanish: “Para venir a gustarlo todo, no quieras tener gusto en nada…”
18Saint John of the Cross, The Ascent of Mount Carmel, book I, ch. 13: one renounces the taste for things “for the love of Jesus Christ, who in this life had and wanted no other taste than to do the will of his Father.”
19Saint Teresa of Ávila, The Way of Perfection, ch. 4: the three things she recommends to her sisters—mutual love, detachment from all created things, and humility. Edition: Complete Works, Carmelite translation, Cerf.
20Paraphrase of the teaching of Saint Teresa of Ávila, The Way of Perfection, on God’s readiness to give Himself to souls who do all to detach themselves from earthly things: the exact source of a verbatim quotation not having been found, the passage is presented as paraphrase, not as quotation.
21Condensed formula (paraphrase), not verbatim: Saint Teresa of Ávila, The Way of Perfection — we believe we give ourselves entirely to God while we keep the essential for ourselves. Exact source not found.
22Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491–1556), Spiritual Exercises, no. 23, “Principle and Foundation.” Reference text: Spiritual Exercises, translated by Édouard Gueydan, Desclée de Brouwer / Bellarmin, 1986.
24Saint Francis de Sales (1567–1622), Introduction to the Devout Life, Part III, ch. 14, “On the poverty of spirit observed among riches.”
25Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, III, 14, image of the kingfishers whose nest remains impenetrable to the sea: the heart must remain “master of riches,” over them and not in them.
26Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, III, 14, comparison to the apothecary who holds poisons without being poisoned.
27 38Saint Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life, III, 14, on avarice, “a prodigious fever that becomes all the more insensitive the more violent and ardent it is.”
28Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus (1873–1897), letters 93 (to Marie Guérin, July 14, 1889: “Creatures are too small…”) and 89 (to Céline, April 26, 1889: “Oh! let us leave nothing… nothing in our heart but Jesus!”) — two distinct letters, cited here separately. Texts verified word for word on the online edition of the Lisieux Carmel Archives (LT 89, LT 93); reference edition: General Correspondence, Cerf / DDB.
29 30Saint Thérèse of the Child Jesus, letter 105 (to Céline, May 10, 1890 — not July 1890). Text verified word for word on the online edition of the Lisieux Carmel Archives (LT 105); reference edition: General Correspondence, Cerf / DDB.
31Venerable Marthe Robin (1902–1981), Journal: December 1929 – November 1932, Foyer de Charité Editions, 2012, p. 37 — pagination of the cited edition not cross-checked in this audit.
32Venerable Marthe Robin, Journal: December 1929 – November 1932, Foyer de Charité Editions, 2012, p. 34 — pagination of the cited edition not cross-checked in this audit.
33Blessed Conchita Cabrera de Armida (1862–1937), Life in the Holy Spirit, Emmanuel Editions, 2009, p. 19 — pagination of the cited edition not cross-checked in this audit.
34Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta (1865–1947), The Book of Heaven, volume 11, August 28, 1912, entry 11-32 (“Love transforms the soul into God, provided it be empty of all”). Résiac / Lumen Luminis edition (“for private use”), pp. 46–47; passage verified.
35Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 11, February 24, 1912, entry 11-6 (“The soul that lives in the Divine Will loses its temperament and acquires that of Jesus”). Same edition, pp. 14–15; passage verified.
36Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 1, utterance no. 5. Same edition, pp. 116–117; passage verified. The progression of detachment toward life in the Divine Will.
37Maurice Zundel (1897–1975), Another Look at Man, Jubilé Editions, 2005, p. 25 — pagination of the cited edition not cross-checked in this audit.
39Saint Vincent de Paul (1581–1660), Saint Vincent de Paul by his writings, Médiaspaul, 2003, p. 94 — pagination of the cited edition not cross-checked in this audit.
40Jesus to Luisa Piccarreta, The Book of Heaven, volume 2, April 26, 1899, entry “The greatness of stripped souls”. Résiac / Lumen Luminis edition (“for private use”), p. 28 — pagination not cross-checked in this audit. Volume, date and text corroborated by the English edition (Book of Heaven, vol. 2, April 26, 1899: “they become just like crystals”).
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