If we do not pay great attention to mortifying our own will, there are many things that can take from us that holy liberty of spirit, which we seek in order to be able to mount freely towards our Creator, without being always weighed down with earth and lead. Besides, in a soul that belongs to itself, and is attached to its own will, there can never be solid virtue. - Saint Teresa
Saint Mary Magdalen de' Pazzi said one day that she asked nothing of the Lord except that He would take her own will from her; for she knew that through the vivacity of her disposition, she did not advance so much as she desired in those virtues which render a soul most pleasing to the Lord. After saying this, she raised her eyes to Heaven and fell into an ecstasy, in which she was shown by God how much harm is done to souls, especially those of religious, when they are guided by their own will - which they once consecrated to God by vow. In the course of the ecstasy, she took her Superior by the hand and led her to the oratory, where she knelt and prayed the Virgin to enlighten her Superior also, that she might take pains to despoil her of her will; and after prostrating herself three times upon the ground, she recovered from her trance. She was so much in earnest in this matter that she once said she did not remember ever to have tried, either secretly or openly, to incline the will of her Superior to her own.
- text taken from A Year with the Saints, composed by an unknown Italian, translated by a member of the Order of Mercy; it has the Imprimatur of Archbishop Michael Augustine Corrigan, Archdiocese of New York, New York, 21 January 1891