Suffering

"God looks to you to be more open and more pliant. If you are to enter into Him you need to be freer and more eager. Have done then with your egoism and your fear of suffering. Love others as you love yourself, that is to say admit them into yourself, all of them, even those whom, if you were a pagan, you would exclude. Accept pain. Take up your cross, my soul." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, from "Hymn of the Universe".

Contemplation

"There is a point in happiness at which the mind simply rests in enjoyment, in a moment of tranquil attention to what is before it.  The obvious examples are from the experience of what is beautiful - listening to music, looking at a painting, enjoying a landscape; and from the realm of simple relaxation - by the sea, watching the white crest of a wave falling down itself with a final shudder on the wet sand while the mind relaxes, expands, reaches out to God knows what; and from the realm of love - the realization that you love and are loved and you search this mystery for words to hold it and finding none you know there is nothing to be done but silently rest in the centre of contentment.  Most people may not observe themselves doing this, but this actually is the beginning of contemplation, the mind held still to be in this presence." - J. Neville   Ward, from "The Use of Praying".

Surrender

"It was a joy to me, Lord, in the midst of my struggles, to feel that in growing to my own fulfillment I was increasing your hold on me; it was a joy to me, beneath the inward burgeoning of life and amidst the unfolding of events that favored me, to surrender myself to your providence. And now that I have discovered the joy of turning every increase into a way of making— or allowing — your presence to grow within me, I beg of you: bring me to a serene acceptance of that final phase of communion with you in which I shall attain to possession of
you by diminishing within you." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, from "Hymn of the Universe".