What matters in mental prayer is not so much what we do, as what God does in us. — Time for God, p.50

Now God is not the God of the dead but of the living, and his presence, being the presence of the living God, is active, life-giving, healing, and sanctifying. One can’t stand in front of a fire without being warmed, or stay in the sun without being tanned, and in remaining in God’s presence and letting him act in the depths of our being, we are doing what really counts.
- Time for God, p.51

The secret actually is very simple. It is to understand that we can only transform reality fruitfully if we accept it first. This also means having the humility to recognize that we cannot change ourselves by our own efforts, but that all progress in the spiritual life, every victory over ourselves, is a gift of God’s grace.
- Interior Freedom, p. 35

Often we find it easier to love than to let ourselves be loved. Doing something, giving something, gratifies us and makes us feel useful, but letting ourselves be loved means consenting not to do anything, to be nothing. Our first task in mental prayer, instead of offering or doing anything for God, is to let ourselves be loved by him like very small children. Let God have the joy of loving us. That is difficult, because it means having a rock-solid belief in God’s love for us. It also implies accepting the fact of our own poverty. Here we touch on something absolutely fundamental: there is no true love for God which is not built on a recognition of the absolute priority of God’s love for us; there is no true love for God that has not grasped that, before doing anything at all, we have first to receive. “In this is love,” St. John tells us, “not that we loved God, but that he loved us first” (1 Jn 4: 10).
- Time for God, pp.53-54