"One thing I have to warn you of especially is your constant tendency to grow fainthearted under the weight of your faults and oversights and an inclination almost to despair when a sudden lack of confidence reduces your firm decisions to nothing. I know those moods when you sit there utterly alone, eaten up with unhappiness, in a pure state of grief. You don’t move towards Me but desperately imagine that everything that you have ever done has been utterly lost and forgotten.
This near despair and self-pity are actually a form of pride. What you think was a state of absolute security from which you’ve fallen was really trusting too much in your own strength and ability. Profound depression and perplexity of mind often follow a loss of hope; what really ails you is that things simply haven’t happened as you expected and wanted. In fact, I don’t want you to rely on your own strength and abilities and plans, but to distrust them and to distrust yourself, and to trust me and no one and nothing else. As long as you rely on yourself you are bound to come to grief.
You still have a most important lesson to learn: Your own strength will no more help you to stand upright than dropping yourself on a broken reed. You must not despair on me. You must hope and trust in me absolutely. My mercy is infinite."
-- John of Landsberg, 16th century Carthusian Monk
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