If you cannot recollect yourself continuously do so once a day at least in the morning or in the evening. In the morning make a resolution and in the evening examine yourself on what you have said this day what you have done and thought for in these things perhaps you have often offended God and those about you.

Pardon me also and deal mercifully with me as often as I think of anything besides You in prayer. For I confess truly that I am accustomed to be very much distracted. Very often I am not where bodily I stand or sit rather I am where my thoughts carry me. Where my thoughts are there am I and frequently my thoughts are where my love is. That which naturally delights or is by habit pleasing comes to me quickly. Hence You Who are Truth itself have plainly said For where your treasure is there is your heart also. If I love heaven I think willingly of heavenly things. If I love the world I rejoice at the happiness of the world and grieve at its troubles. If I love the flesh I often imagine things that are carnal. If I love the spirit I delight in thinking of spiritual matters. For whatever I love I am willing to speak and hear about.

My child I am the Lord Who gives strength in the day of trouble. Come to Me when all is not well with you. Your tardiness in turning to prayer is the greatest obstacle to heavenly consolation for before you pray earnestly to Me you first seek many comforts and take pleasure in outward things. Thus all things are of little profit to you until you realize that I am the one Who saves those who trust in Me and that outside of Me there is no worth-while help or any useful counsel or lasting remedy.

It is good for us to have trials and troubles at times for they often remind us that we are on probation and ought not to hope in any worldly thing. It is good for us sometimes to suffer contradiction to be misjudged by men even though we do well and mean well. These things help us to be humble and shield us from vainglory. When to all outward appearances men give us no credit when they do not think well of us then we are more inclined to seek God Who sees our hearts. Therefore a man ought to root himself so firmly in God that he will not need the consolations of men.