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And You Will Find Rest: What God Does in Prayer
For six years, before becoming a well-regarded retreat master, Fr. Wayne Sattler lived as a diocesan hermit in a one-room cabin on an abandoned farmstead in rural North Dakota, striving to avail himself of the mystery of what God can do in prayer, clinging to the wisdom of the sixteenth-century Carmelite saints John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila as his trusted guides.
Fr. Sattler was asked many times to write a book sharing the fruits of his time in solitude to help others progress in the spiritual life, and after returning to the active diocesan priesthood in 2013, he completed this long-awaited work. Delving deeply into two of the greatest mystical masterpieces ever written, St. John’s Dark Night of the Soul and St. Teresa’s Interior Castle, Father leads you through the intricate pathways of contemplative prayer, providing clarity on this oft-misunderstood subject.
As you journey with these Doctors of the Church and grow in self-knowledge, you will
How God communicates with us as a Lover and how you can open your heart to HimWhat it may mean if you are nodding off during your meditation (You will be surprised!)Four spirits that influence your thoughts and actionsHow St. John explains the dark night of the senses, and methods to cooperate with God’s graceWays to grow in stillness, navigate distractions, and rest completely in the LordThree ways to practice self-denial, cultivate charity, and attain freedom and peace in prayerSt. John of the Cross describes contemplation as “nothing else than a secret and peaceful and loving inflow of God, which, if not hampered, fires the soul in the spirit of love.” This book sheds light upon the great mystery of the mystical life for everyone. Join Fr. Sattler as he guides you in developing the capacity for contemplative prayer in our great hope of being led more deeply into union with God.
Fr. Sattler was asked many times to write a book sharing the fruits of his time in solitude to help others progress in the spiritual life, and after returning to the active diocesan priesthood in 2013, he completed this long-awaited work. Delving deeply into two of the greatest mystical masterpieces ever written, St. John’s Dark Night of the Soul and St. Teresa’s Interior Castle, Father leads you through the intricate pathways of contemplative prayer, providing clarity on this oft-misunderstood subject.
As you journey with these Doctors of the Church and grow in self-knowledge, you will
How God communicates with us as a Lover and how you can open your heart to HimWhat it may mean if you are nodding off during your meditation (You will be surprised!)Four spirits that influence your thoughts and actionsHow St. John explains the dark night of the senses, and methods to cooperate with God’s graceWays to grow in stillness, navigate distractions, and rest completely in the LordThree ways to practice self-denial, cultivate charity, and attain freedom and peace in prayerSt. John of the Cross describes contemplation as “nothing else than a secret and peaceful and loving inflow of God, which, if not hampered, fires the soul in the spirit of love.” This book sheds light upon the great mystery of the mystical life for everyone. Join Fr. Sattler as he guides you in developing the capacity for contemplative prayer in our great hope of being led more deeply into union with God.
245 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 19, 2024
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April 16, 2026
“The Dark Night of the Soul” is the second part of a commentary St. John wrote to explain his poem “The Dark Night.”
Contemplative religious orders are structured to avail themselves more fully to the work of God in prayer, drawing them and the world they pray for into union with Him.
Contemplation serves to mark that point in prayer when what is being experienced is no longer merely the activity of man, but the pure activity of God. Contemplation is what God does in prayer.
they learned in prayer how to accept Our Lord’s invitation to “take my yoke upon you and learn from me . . . and you will find rest”
a peace Pope Benedict XVI recognizes as “the result of a constant battle against evil,”
“The Dark Night” describes the rather lovesick experience of a soul who can only find its rest in God,
If you have tried to read St. John of the Cross and found it difficult, do not be discouraged. Proper timing and experience of life will play a large factor in appreciating his wisdom—wisdom to carry with us along the journey, not to read through just once.
this spiritual battle, it is not so much as to face off with Satan, as to release the incredible graces Christ longs to send the world through a soul striving to abide in Him.
St. Bruno, the founder of the Carthusians, who explained that “only the love of God explains and really justifies dedicating oneself to the contemplative life.”
“those whose assiduous zeal is devoted to prayer and penance make a greater contribution to the progress of the Church and to the salvation of mankind than do the laborers employed in cultivating the Lord’s field; for if they were not to call down the abundance of divine graces to water that field, the laborers of the gospel would derive a much poorer harvest from their toils.
the “nodding off” we were embarrassed to admit happening during our regularly committed time of prayer might be what St. John describes as the Lord’s way of leading a soul to contemplation.
The Interior Castle is an effort to help us appreciate “the precious things that can be found in the soul.”
there are two levels by which Our Lord communicates to the human soul: through the senses and through the faculties of our soul.
God is a pure spirit, and the way He ordinarily communicates is beyond what “eye can see and ear can hear”
the ordinary path is a much simpler one, to “be still and know that I am God”
Be still and know. Knowing is God’s work, not something we do. We “be still” and allow God to make himself known. Be still is our work. Know is God’s work.
To be still requires a committed effort to place our trust in the ordinary way God desires to lead our soul into His rest.
The blessings of truly knowing God and seeing Him “as he really is” are gifts reserved to the pure of heart: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5: 8). The ordinary path to holiness is well marked by this Beatitude.
Purity of heart requires an ongoing two-part process of purification. The first part is our own efforts to be pure. The second is the activity of God, which is able to purify us at a level we alone are not capable of doing.
all of creation is designed to work together for the very purpose of allowing Our Lord to lead us to where we will find rest for our souls.
I find God’s presence powerfully communicated on the beach—the land, the sea, the wind, and the fire of the sun—all simultaneously breathing of His glorious presence.
God radiates through all of creation with the clear aim to illuminate our human heart. In prayer, many experience His light as being filtered through the gates of this world’s elements to enter the doors of our senses and finally to shine through the windows of our soul into our thirsting heart.
active purifications are our efforts to purify our heart by removing the things that block the doors of our senses and mar the windows of our soul. Our best efforts at self-denial are not able to bring about the purity of heart needed to see God.
The passive purifications are the times when the hand of God comes to open our doors and wash our windows. It is passive, because it is by the hand of God that we are now being purified. It is not entirely passive, however; we still need to give our consent.
although Original Sin is erased by Baptism, its effects on our human nature remain, which weaken us and leave us inclined to evil.
St. John of the Cross refers to the senses as the lower part of our soul. They are the primary level at which we experience God communing with us. Each of our senses was given to help lead our soul into His rest.
St. Francis of Assisi was restless around lepers; the mere sight of them would revolt him. In his desire to see them as God sees them, he went up to a leper and kissed him. That was one of St. Francis’s first steps to enter into the rest of God,
If we choose to obey only what is pleasing to our ears, we will never be led to a place of true rest.
God’s “still small voice” (1 Kings 19: 12) speaks best in silence,
God loves the smell of a sacrifice that comes from the heart of a human striving to be at peace with God.
you must allow Christ to do it. You must see Jesus in this man, and you must be Jesus for him.”
becoming a spiritual glutton. This happens when we engage in spiritual activities merely for our personal pleasure rather than for the love of God.
The process of purification is meant to restore us to the fullness of life. Christ proclaimed, “I came that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10: 10). Without the purification Christ came to bring us, our quest for fulfillment would remain restless.
A brief look at the account of the Fall might help us appreciate that it was the fall of every one of our senses.
This is the error behind every choice to disobey God: the thought that He is not a generous God, that we cannot trust Him, not entirely.
when the serpent came to tempt her to do the one thing God told them not to do, Adam should have stepped in to defend his wife from this attack of the evil one.
There is a deeper level of communication beyond our senses. It is there that God informs our intellect of the plan He has for our life, where our memory holds the hope of this plan, and where our will is placed in the battle for whether or not we freely choose this plan of faith.
in Heaven everyone’s soul will be filled to the brim with the glory of God. Pauline had St. Thérèse take a tiny sewing thimble and their father’s large drinking tumbler and fill them both to the brim with water. This helped Thérèse to recognize how “in heaven God will grant His Elect as much glory as they can take.” The point is that our time on earth will determine the capacity of our soul. In Heaven, each soul will be filled to capacity with the love of God. Now is the time that we determine whether our capacity to receive God’s love will be that of a tiny sewing thimble or of a big drinking tumbler.
The body and the soul are described as the matter and form of a human being. The body is the matter, the physical material with which we are made. The soul is what gives form to who we truly are.
Our intellect can be directly informed by God through prayer and indirectly through what we choose to fill it with.
We are free to choose whether our intellect will be filled with the wisdom of the gospel or with the ways of the world.
The faculty of memory is given to record what truly happens. It is a very powerful part of the soul.
Our memory is there to keep us rooted in the truth of God’s mercy and justice.
the Cross is not our enemy—it is the instrument of our salvation.
memory is given to help us remain rooted in what we have learned of God’s revelation. The more we fill our intellect with His Word, the more certain it is that our memory will guide us into the hope of entering into His rest. If we choose to fill our intellect with what the world has to say, the more likely our memory will leave us “anxious and worried about many things”
The will is God’s incredible gift of love to us humans, which enables us to freely choose what truth we will live by.
The true glory of God lies in our free choices to know, love, and serve Him.
The world is redeemed by the patience of God. It is destroyed by the impatience of man.”
She ate that fruit, not for nourishment, but for the taste of worldly wisdom.
In book two of The Dark Night, he spells out how the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love will lead the intellect, memory, and will into God’s rest.
embrace the Call to “deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me”
For those who love God, even our every cross can be seen as being used by God to accomplish good.
“Why did we not die at Yahweh’s hand in Egypt, where we used to sit round the flesh pots and could eat to our heart’s content?” (Exod. 16: 3). So distorted was their taste that God needed to restrict their diet for forty years.
a burnt offering would have a repugnant odor; it was the sacrifice made in obedience to God that rendered it pleasing to Him. God loves the smell of sacrifice.
The path of faith He calls us to walk heals our intellect of the warped, worldly way of thinking.
it is often those most deeply wounded whom Our Lord leads to enter most deeply into His rest.
“You must not be like others; you must be like Christ. In order for others to live, you must die. If you do not die, others will not live.”
Baptism not only washed us of the stain of Original Sin, it began to address our weak and wounded souls with the ointments of faith, hope, and love.
he took his eyes of faith off Jesus, quickly lost his peace, and nearly lost his life.
Our Lord guides us into His rest through His gifts of faith, hope, and love.
the necessity of bringing order to our senses so that our feet might be pointed in the right direction to be led by Jesus into His rest. The mystics will recognize that “it is the pull of our passions that undermines our peace.” Our passions are easily stimulated through what our senses tell them.
the hermits of old say that prayer is not possible until the passions are quieted.
To drink of the cup is an Old Testament metaphor for accepting God’s plan for our life.
“The only attractive feature of the cross is its relationship to Jesus.” Yet there could be no more attractive relationship. If it means embracing a cross so that I might remain with Jesus, then so be it!
It is worth noting that a cross and a yoke are basically the same form.
We cannot be led into His rest if we refuse to enter into His yoke.
a lack of self-denial keeps us from entering into His rest.
The Law is only able to point our feet in the right direction.
By nature, we are attracted to the good, and by grace we desire to love God in return.
The passing goods of this world, so alluring and readily accessible, easily distract us. What we lack is purity of heart. Our hearts have become corrupted by disordered loves.
If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great.
Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and He gives you everything. When we give ourselves to Him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ—and you will find true life.
Asceticism could be easily exchanged with the word penance. Penance is exercise or training in self-denial to turn the heart away from sin and toward God.
The Carthusians never reformed, because they never deformed.
True self-denial enables us to keep our focus on Christ.
“Our passions have a certain autonomy; they are oriented towards their own ends and are activated when one of these ends appears to the senses or in the mind. At the same time, it is in our power to control them, to submit them to reason and the law of God. But this only can be done with tact, gradually, as one would tame a wild horse.”
allowing the wild horse to run free leaves our hearts restless. We gradually understand that it is our undisciplined passions that undermine our peace.
Abba Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov recognized that “the soul has as many masters as it has passions.”
Asceticism restores that order which has been upset by the Fall.
“For what could be more perverted, more reckless and contrary to nature and right order, than to love the creature more than the Creator, what passes away more than what lasts forever, or to seek rather the goods of the earth than those of heaven.” St Bruno
how blind we are if we trust only what we see with our eyes.
A wild horse needs to be tamed gradually and with tact. We slowly and surely limit its boundaries. It is the same in the spiritual life; our practice of self-denial must begin gradually.
The proper intent of asceticism is to create “an emptiness, a listening ear, a heart that is attentive.” In order to cultivate a life of prayer, we need interior silence. This silence can only be achieved by stilling the voice of our passions. In the words of the Carthusians, there can be no peace “unless the voice of the passions is stilled.”
the active purifications are not an end; they are means to a higher goal. As the Carthusians explain, “We do not give an absolute value to penances. They are the means used for an end: following Christ.”
The purpose of fasting is to help us remain with Christ. This is important, for it is tempting to approach asceticism with the thought that our personal efforts at self-denial are capable of earning something from God.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux explains, “Sanctity does not consist in this or that practice; it consists in a disposition of heart which makes us humble and little in the arms of God, conscious of our weakness, and confident to the point of audacity in the goodness of our Father.”
It is all about the heart, and only a “humble, contrite heart” can be led into the rest of experiencing that “God’s grace is sufficient for you.”
“everything depends on the motivation behind the ascesis.”
it is the interior disposition that determines the effect these acts have on their spiritual life.
St. Irenaeus once proclaimed, “The glory of God is man alive.” To be fully alive entails an intimate awareness of our every passion and need, with the resolve to subject each of them to what alone can satisfy: “loving God with our whole heart, mind, and soul.”
we practice self-denial: Through voluntary acts of mortification In accepting the rejection that necessarily comes from the world for loyalty to the gospel through gracefully embracing the adversities and sorrows that accompany our earthly life
Jesus made it clear that fidelity to Him would entail persecution. In fact, He instructed us to rejoice in such persecution; “Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you (falsely) because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven” (Matt. 5: 11–12).
All, therefore, who intend to follow Jesus and to commit themselves without compromise to the truth, must know that they will encounter opposition and that in spite of themselves they will become a sign of division between people, even in their own families.
Most opportunities of penance will not require any prior consideration; they come quite naturally.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux was a champion at gracefully embracing the trials that came as a natural part of her daily life. She mentions her struggle with “a Sister who has the faculty of displeasing me in everything, in her ways, her words, her character, everything seems very disagreeable to me.” Thérèse resolved to treat her as she would the person she loved the most. She not only prayed for her, but “took care to render her all the services possible . . . giving her my most friendly smile” to the point that the sister came to comment, “What attracts you so much toward me; every time you look at me, I see your smile?”
We don’t need to go looking for penance; if we live and love, penance will come to us.
voluntary acts of mortification can assist our spiritual growth in these three ways: To feel closer to the Passion of Christ To create a vacuum in our life to be filled by Our Lord
By denying ourselves a legitimate pleasure, we are trained to refuse illegitimate pleasures
Jesus’ great love for us and ultimately for the Father enabled Him to endure such extreme sufferings.
It was love that held Jesus to the Cross.
Love needs to be the motivating factor behind every voluntary act of self-denial. Our Father does not look so much at the action being performed as He does the heart.
Being a follower of Christ means becoming conformed to Him who became a servant even to giving Himself on the Cross.”
Denying ourselves the pleasure found in legitimate goods strengthens us to resist the temptation to yield to illegitimate pleasures.
We need to strengthen those interior muscles that hold us back from where our passions are trying to pull us.
the more advanced you see you are in love for your neighbor, the more advanced you will be in the love of God.”
“our capacity for welcoming the other is precisely conditioned by our capacity to welcome God.”
St. Thomas Aquinas explains how our increasing love for God enables us “to put enmities aside and show love towards [our] neighbor.”
God loves us. It is His great desire that we remain in His love. If the relationship falters, it is because of our lack of resolve to respond to His love with our whole heart, our whole mind, and our whole soul. God, for His part, is continually trying to woo us into an intimate relationship.
For our words to be truly prayer, they must come from the heart.
St. John Chrysostom states, “Whether your prayer is heard depends not on the number of words, but on the fervor of our souls.”
we too often carelessly cease praying vocally as the words fail to come from the heart. We need to take care to ensure that our words to God are indeed vocal prayers by having them truly come from our heart.
vocal prayer is the form Jesus Himself taught us. We never become so advanced in prayer that we cease to pray vocally. Just as in a good marriage, the couple never moves beyond the need to communicate verbally. In our humanity, we need to express our feelings externally.
Meditation is taking the conversation we began vocally with Our Lord and continuing it in our mind.
St. Teresa of Ávila explained, “Mental prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.”
Christian mysticism is born of the Revelation of the living God.
The ordinary path to contemplation is through the dark night, when God makes it impossible for us to meditate as He tries to free us from our attachment to lesser goods.
“Contemplation is nothing else than a secret and peaceful and loving inflow of God, w
Contemplative religious orders are structured to avail themselves more fully to the work of God in prayer, drawing them and the world they pray for into union with Him.
Contemplation serves to mark that point in prayer when what is being experienced is no longer merely the activity of man, but the pure activity of God. Contemplation is what God does in prayer.
they learned in prayer how to accept Our Lord’s invitation to “take my yoke upon you and learn from me . . . and you will find rest”
a peace Pope Benedict XVI recognizes as “the result of a constant battle against evil,”
“The Dark Night” describes the rather lovesick experience of a soul who can only find its rest in God,
If you have tried to read St. John of the Cross and found it difficult, do not be discouraged. Proper timing and experience of life will play a large factor in appreciating his wisdom—wisdom to carry with us along the journey, not to read through just once.
this spiritual battle, it is not so much as to face off with Satan, as to release the incredible graces Christ longs to send the world through a soul striving to abide in Him.
St. Bruno, the founder of the Carthusians, who explained that “only the love of God explains and really justifies dedicating oneself to the contemplative life.”
“those whose assiduous zeal is devoted to prayer and penance make a greater contribution to the progress of the Church and to the salvation of mankind than do the laborers employed in cultivating the Lord’s field; for if they were not to call down the abundance of divine graces to water that field, the laborers of the gospel would derive a much poorer harvest from their toils.
the “nodding off” we were embarrassed to admit happening during our regularly committed time of prayer might be what St. John describes as the Lord’s way of leading a soul to contemplation.
The Interior Castle is an effort to help us appreciate “the precious things that can be found in the soul.”
there are two levels by which Our Lord communicates to the human soul: through the senses and through the faculties of our soul.
God is a pure spirit, and the way He ordinarily communicates is beyond what “eye can see and ear can hear”
the ordinary path is a much simpler one, to “be still and know that I am God”
Be still and know. Knowing is God’s work, not something we do. We “be still” and allow God to make himself known. Be still is our work. Know is God’s work.
To be still requires a committed effort to place our trust in the ordinary way God desires to lead our soul into His rest.
The blessings of truly knowing God and seeing Him “as he really is” are gifts reserved to the pure of heart: “Blessed are the pure of heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5: 8). The ordinary path to holiness is well marked by this Beatitude.
Purity of heart requires an ongoing two-part process of purification. The first part is our own efforts to be pure. The second is the activity of God, which is able to purify us at a level we alone are not capable of doing.
all of creation is designed to work together for the very purpose of allowing Our Lord to lead us to where we will find rest for our souls.
I find God’s presence powerfully communicated on the beach—the land, the sea, the wind, and the fire of the sun—all simultaneously breathing of His glorious presence.
God radiates through all of creation with the clear aim to illuminate our human heart. In prayer, many experience His light as being filtered through the gates of this world’s elements to enter the doors of our senses and finally to shine through the windows of our soul into our thirsting heart.
active purifications are our efforts to purify our heart by removing the things that block the doors of our senses and mar the windows of our soul. Our best efforts at self-denial are not able to bring about the purity of heart needed to see God.
The passive purifications are the times when the hand of God comes to open our doors and wash our windows. It is passive, because it is by the hand of God that we are now being purified. It is not entirely passive, however; we still need to give our consent.
although Original Sin is erased by Baptism, its effects on our human nature remain, which weaken us and leave us inclined to evil.
St. John of the Cross refers to the senses as the lower part of our soul. They are the primary level at which we experience God communing with us. Each of our senses was given to help lead our soul into His rest.
St. Francis of Assisi was restless around lepers; the mere sight of them would revolt him. In his desire to see them as God sees them, he went up to a leper and kissed him. That was one of St. Francis’s first steps to enter into the rest of God,
If we choose to obey only what is pleasing to our ears, we will never be led to a place of true rest.
God’s “still small voice” (1 Kings 19: 12) speaks best in silence,
God loves the smell of a sacrifice that comes from the heart of a human striving to be at peace with God.
you must allow Christ to do it. You must see Jesus in this man, and you must be Jesus for him.”
becoming a spiritual glutton. This happens when we engage in spiritual activities merely for our personal pleasure rather than for the love of God.
The process of purification is meant to restore us to the fullness of life. Christ proclaimed, “I came that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10: 10). Without the purification Christ came to bring us, our quest for fulfillment would remain restless.
A brief look at the account of the Fall might help us appreciate that it was the fall of every one of our senses.
This is the error behind every choice to disobey God: the thought that He is not a generous God, that we cannot trust Him, not entirely.
when the serpent came to tempt her to do the one thing God told them not to do, Adam should have stepped in to defend his wife from this attack of the evil one.
There is a deeper level of communication beyond our senses. It is there that God informs our intellect of the plan He has for our life, where our memory holds the hope of this plan, and where our will is placed in the battle for whether or not we freely choose this plan of faith.
in Heaven everyone’s soul will be filled to the brim with the glory of God. Pauline had St. Thérèse take a tiny sewing thimble and their father’s large drinking tumbler and fill them both to the brim with water. This helped Thérèse to recognize how “in heaven God will grant His Elect as much glory as they can take.” The point is that our time on earth will determine the capacity of our soul. In Heaven, each soul will be filled to capacity with the love of God. Now is the time that we determine whether our capacity to receive God’s love will be that of a tiny sewing thimble or of a big drinking tumbler.
The body and the soul are described as the matter and form of a human being. The body is the matter, the physical material with which we are made. The soul is what gives form to who we truly are.
Our intellect can be directly informed by God through prayer and indirectly through what we choose to fill it with.
We are free to choose whether our intellect will be filled with the wisdom of the gospel or with the ways of the world.
The faculty of memory is given to record what truly happens. It is a very powerful part of the soul.
Our memory is there to keep us rooted in the truth of God’s mercy and justice.
the Cross is not our enemy—it is the instrument of our salvation.
memory is given to help us remain rooted in what we have learned of God’s revelation. The more we fill our intellect with His Word, the more certain it is that our memory will guide us into the hope of entering into His rest. If we choose to fill our intellect with what the world has to say, the more likely our memory will leave us “anxious and worried about many things”
The will is God’s incredible gift of love to us humans, which enables us to freely choose what truth we will live by.
The true glory of God lies in our free choices to know, love, and serve Him.
The world is redeemed by the patience of God. It is destroyed by the impatience of man.”
She ate that fruit, not for nourishment, but for the taste of worldly wisdom.
In book two of The Dark Night, he spells out how the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love will lead the intellect, memory, and will into God’s rest.
embrace the Call to “deny yourself, pick up your cross and follow me”
For those who love God, even our every cross can be seen as being used by God to accomplish good.
“Why did we not die at Yahweh’s hand in Egypt, where we used to sit round the flesh pots and could eat to our heart’s content?” (Exod. 16: 3). So distorted was their taste that God needed to restrict their diet for forty years.
a burnt offering would have a repugnant odor; it was the sacrifice made in obedience to God that rendered it pleasing to Him. God loves the smell of sacrifice.
The path of faith He calls us to walk heals our intellect of the warped, worldly way of thinking.
it is often those most deeply wounded whom Our Lord leads to enter most deeply into His rest.
“You must not be like others; you must be like Christ. In order for others to live, you must die. If you do not die, others will not live.”
Baptism not only washed us of the stain of Original Sin, it began to address our weak and wounded souls with the ointments of faith, hope, and love.
he took his eyes of faith off Jesus, quickly lost his peace, and nearly lost his life.
Our Lord guides us into His rest through His gifts of faith, hope, and love.
the necessity of bringing order to our senses so that our feet might be pointed in the right direction to be led by Jesus into His rest. The mystics will recognize that “it is the pull of our passions that undermines our peace.” Our passions are easily stimulated through what our senses tell them.
the hermits of old say that prayer is not possible until the passions are quieted.
To drink of the cup is an Old Testament metaphor for accepting God’s plan for our life.
“The only attractive feature of the cross is its relationship to Jesus.” Yet there could be no more attractive relationship. If it means embracing a cross so that I might remain with Jesus, then so be it!
It is worth noting that a cross and a yoke are basically the same form.
We cannot be led into His rest if we refuse to enter into His yoke.
a lack of self-denial keeps us from entering into His rest.
The Law is only able to point our feet in the right direction.
By nature, we are attracted to the good, and by grace we desire to love God in return.
The passing goods of this world, so alluring and readily accessible, easily distract us. What we lack is purity of heart. Our hearts have become corrupted by disordered loves.
If we let Christ into our lives, we lose nothing, nothing, absolutely nothing of what makes life free, beautiful and great.
Do not be afraid of Christ! He takes nothing away, and He gives you everything. When we give ourselves to Him, we receive a hundredfold in return. Yes, open, open wide the doors to Christ—and you will find true life.
Asceticism could be easily exchanged with the word penance. Penance is exercise or training in self-denial to turn the heart away from sin and toward God.
The Carthusians never reformed, because they never deformed.
True self-denial enables us to keep our focus on Christ.
“Our passions have a certain autonomy; they are oriented towards their own ends and are activated when one of these ends appears to the senses or in the mind. At the same time, it is in our power to control them, to submit them to reason and the law of God. But this only can be done with tact, gradually, as one would tame a wild horse.”
allowing the wild horse to run free leaves our hearts restless. We gradually understand that it is our undisciplined passions that undermine our peace.
Abba Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov recognized that “the soul has as many masters as it has passions.”
Asceticism restores that order which has been upset by the Fall.
“For what could be more perverted, more reckless and contrary to nature and right order, than to love the creature more than the Creator, what passes away more than what lasts forever, or to seek rather the goods of the earth than those of heaven.” St Bruno
how blind we are if we trust only what we see with our eyes.
A wild horse needs to be tamed gradually and with tact. We slowly and surely limit its boundaries. It is the same in the spiritual life; our practice of self-denial must begin gradually.
The proper intent of asceticism is to create “an emptiness, a listening ear, a heart that is attentive.” In order to cultivate a life of prayer, we need interior silence. This silence can only be achieved by stilling the voice of our passions. In the words of the Carthusians, there can be no peace “unless the voice of the passions is stilled.”
the active purifications are not an end; they are means to a higher goal. As the Carthusians explain, “We do not give an absolute value to penances. They are the means used for an end: following Christ.”
The purpose of fasting is to help us remain with Christ. This is important, for it is tempting to approach asceticism with the thought that our personal efforts at self-denial are capable of earning something from God.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux explains, “Sanctity does not consist in this or that practice; it consists in a disposition of heart which makes us humble and little in the arms of God, conscious of our weakness, and confident to the point of audacity in the goodness of our Father.”
It is all about the heart, and only a “humble, contrite heart” can be led into the rest of experiencing that “God’s grace is sufficient for you.”
“everything depends on the motivation behind the ascesis.”
it is the interior disposition that determines the effect these acts have on their spiritual life.
St. Irenaeus once proclaimed, “The glory of God is man alive.” To be fully alive entails an intimate awareness of our every passion and need, with the resolve to subject each of them to what alone can satisfy: “loving God with our whole heart, mind, and soul.”
we practice self-denial: Through voluntary acts of mortification In accepting the rejection that necessarily comes from the world for loyalty to the gospel through gracefully embracing the adversities and sorrows that accompany our earthly life
Jesus made it clear that fidelity to Him would entail persecution. In fact, He instructed us to rejoice in such persecution; “Blessed are you when they insult you and persecute you and utter every kind of evil against you (falsely) because of me. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven” (Matt. 5: 11–12).
All, therefore, who intend to follow Jesus and to commit themselves without compromise to the truth, must know that they will encounter opposition and that in spite of themselves they will become a sign of division between people, even in their own families.
Most opportunities of penance will not require any prior consideration; they come quite naturally.
St. Thérèse of Lisieux was a champion at gracefully embracing the trials that came as a natural part of her daily life. She mentions her struggle with “a Sister who has the faculty of displeasing me in everything, in her ways, her words, her character, everything seems very disagreeable to me.” Thérèse resolved to treat her as she would the person she loved the most. She not only prayed for her, but “took care to render her all the services possible . . . giving her my most friendly smile” to the point that the sister came to comment, “What attracts you so much toward me; every time you look at me, I see your smile?”
We don’t need to go looking for penance; if we live and love, penance will come to us.
voluntary acts of mortification can assist our spiritual growth in these three ways: To feel closer to the Passion of Christ To create a vacuum in our life to be filled by Our Lord
By denying ourselves a legitimate pleasure, we are trained to refuse illegitimate pleasures
Jesus’ great love for us and ultimately for the Father enabled Him to endure such extreme sufferings.
It was love that held Jesus to the Cross.
Love needs to be the motivating factor behind every voluntary act of self-denial. Our Father does not look so much at the action being performed as He does the heart.
Being a follower of Christ means becoming conformed to Him who became a servant even to giving Himself on the Cross.”
Denying ourselves the pleasure found in legitimate goods strengthens us to resist the temptation to yield to illegitimate pleasures.
We need to strengthen those interior muscles that hold us back from where our passions are trying to pull us.
the more advanced you see you are in love for your neighbor, the more advanced you will be in the love of God.”
“our capacity for welcoming the other is precisely conditioned by our capacity to welcome God.”
St. Thomas Aquinas explains how our increasing love for God enables us “to put enmities aside and show love towards [our] neighbor.”
God loves us. It is His great desire that we remain in His love. If the relationship falters, it is because of our lack of resolve to respond to His love with our whole heart, our whole mind, and our whole soul. God, for His part, is continually trying to woo us into an intimate relationship.
For our words to be truly prayer, they must come from the heart.
St. John Chrysostom states, “Whether your prayer is heard depends not on the number of words, but on the fervor of our souls.”
we too often carelessly cease praying vocally as the words fail to come from the heart. We need to take care to ensure that our words to God are indeed vocal prayers by having them truly come from our heart.
vocal prayer is the form Jesus Himself taught us. We never become so advanced in prayer that we cease to pray vocally. Just as in a good marriage, the couple never moves beyond the need to communicate verbally. In our humanity, we need to express our feelings externally.
Meditation is taking the conversation we began vocally with Our Lord and continuing it in our mind.
St. Teresa of Ávila explained, “Mental prayer in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.”
Christian mysticism is born of the Revelation of the living God.
The ordinary path to contemplation is through the dark night, when God makes it impossible for us to meditate as He tries to free us from our attachment to lesser goods.
“Contemplation is nothing else than a secret and peaceful and loving inflow of God, w
January 31, 2025
This is an amazing work of writing. This book is a bit "advanced" or may be difficult to understand or intimidating to the beginner Christian. However, it is the christian in those beginning stages who need this most. And that's almost everyone. Father Sattler, through his 6 years isolation, explains who God is, who we are, what sin and evil is, what the interior battle is, and how to live out our earthly lives in preparation for our eternal lives. Most importantly, he explains what prayer truly is, how to pray, and how to abandon self and align your will to only the Will of God. St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross are the patron saints that greatly assist him in this writing this work.
This book is a treasure, a deep study, and the content in this book alone can be contemplated on for a lifetime. I highly recommend to all Christians.
This book is a treasure, a deep study, and the content in this book alone can be contemplated on for a lifetime. I highly recommend to all Christians.
December 19, 2025
Approachable overview of St. Teresa and St. John’s doctrine on the development of the spiritual life
I found the text simple yet profound. Fr. Sattler opens the teachings of the two Spanish spiritual masters with eloquence and grounds the doctrine using helpful anecdotes and examples.
I found the text simple yet profound. Fr. Sattler opens the teachings of the two Spanish spiritual masters with eloquence and grounds the doctrine using helpful anecdotes and examples.
May 1, 2026
PRAYER
Fr. Sattler discusses the writings of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross on prayer. His discussion covers the first part of their writings, the remainder to be covered in a forthcoming book. I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in the deeper aspects of prayer.
Fr. Sattler discusses the writings of St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross on prayer. His discussion covers the first part of their writings, the remainder to be covered in a forthcoming book. I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in the deeper aspects of prayer.
November 6, 2025
This is not for “beginners.” I’m nothing if not a lifelong work in progress myself and I found it something that needed to be read in small doses. It’s a great book, very thought provoking, but complex and could easily be read multiple times to get the full depth and breadth.
January 27, 2022
I definitely needed to be at the right point in my spiritual life to really get a lot out of this book. But Fr. Sattler breaks down Interior Castles and The Dark Night in a relatable and digestible way that really gives you an understanding and desire to dive into contemplative prayer. This is one I will be reaching for many times in the foreseeable future.
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