QUOTATION: Transubstantion

Since Christ Himself has said, 'This is My Body' who shall dare to doubt that It is His Body?

--St. Cyril of Jerusalem

QUOTATION: Giving up our will to God

To lose ourselves in God is simply to give up our own will to Him. When a soul can truly say, 'Lord, I have no other will than Yours,' it is truly lost in God, and united to Him.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Humility and Salvation

Humility is necessary not only for the acquisition of virtues, but even for salvation. For the gate of Heaven, as Christ Himself testifies, is so narrow that it admits only little ones.

--St. Bernard of Clairvaux

QUOTATION: Purity

Never believe you have attained such purity as you should, whilst your will is not freely and gladly submissive to the holy will of God, as to all, and in all, even in things the most repugnant.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: God's Cause

Again and again, God’s cause seems to be in its death throes. Yet over and over again, it proves to be the thing that truly endures and saves.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth.

QUOTATION: The Spirit of Faith

It is not the actual physical exertion that counts toward a man's progress, nor the nature of the task, but the spirit of faith with which it is undertaken.

--St. Francis Xavier

QUOTATION: Joy

Spiritual joy arises from purity of the heart and perseverance in prayer.

--St. Francis of Assisi

QUOTATION: Holiness and Suffering

All the science of the Saints is included in these two things: To do, and to suffer. And whoever had done these two things best, has made himself most saintly. 

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Perfection

As it is most certain that the teaching of Christ cannot deceive, if we would walk securely, we ought to attach ourselves to it with greatest confidence and to profess openly that we live according to it, and not to the maxims of the world, which are all deceitful. This is the fundamental maxim of all Christian perfection.

--St. Vincent de Paul

QUOTATION: Adversity

Do not reason about afflictions and contradictions, but receive them with patience and sweetness, feeling that it is enough to know that they come from the hand of God.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Blessed are those who mourn

The mourning of which the Lord speaks is nonconformity with evil; it is a way of resisting models of behaviour that the individual is pressured to accept because “everyone does it.” The world cannot tolerate this kind of resistance; it demands conformity. It considers this mourning to be an accusation directed against the numbing of consciences. And so it is. That is why those who mourn suffer persecution for the sake of righteousness.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth.

QUOTATION: Obedience

Obedience is the summary of perfection and of the whole spiritual life, and the securest, shortest, least laborious and least dangerous way of becoming enriched with all virtues, and arriving at the goal of our desires - eternal life.

--Bl. Francisco Alvarez

QUOTATION: Simplicity

Simplicity is nothing but an act of charity pure and simple, which has but one sole end - that of gaining the love of God. Our soul is then truly simple, when we have no aim at all but this, in all we do.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Communion

Holy Communion is the shortest and safest way to Heaven.

--Pope St. Pius X

QUOTATION: Obedience

Many religious and others have been saints without meditation, but without obedience no one.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Penance

I must say that we Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word ‘penance,’ which seemed too harsh to us. Now, under the attacks of the world that speaks to us of our sins, we see that being able to do penance is a grace and we see how it is necessary to do penance, that is, to recognize what is mistaken in our life, to open oneself to forgiveness, to prepare oneself for forgiveness, to allow oneself to be transformed. The pain of penance, that is to say of purification and of transformation, this pain is grace, because it is renewal, and it is the work of Divine Mercy.


-- Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Salvation and Jesus Christ

The prevailing view today is that everyone should live by their religion—or perhaps by the atheism—in which he happens to find himself already. This, it is said, is the path of salvation for him. Such a view presupposes a strange picture of God and a strange idea of man and of the right way for man to live. Let us try to clarify this by asking a few practical questions. Does someone achieve blessedness and justification in God’s eyes because he has conscientiously fulfilled the duties of blood vengeance? Because he has vigourously fought for and in “holy war”? Or because he has performed certain animal sacrifices? Or because he has practiced ritual ablutions and other observances? Because he has declared his opinions and wishes to be norms of conscience and so made himself the criterion? No, God demands the opposite: that we become inwardly attentive to his quiet exhortation, which is present in us and which tears us away from what is merely habitual and puts us on the road to truth. To “hunger and thirst for righteousness”—that is the path that lies open to everyone; that is the way that finds its destination in Jesus Christ.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth.

QUOTATION: Anger

When you feel the assaults of passion and anger, then it is time to be silent as Jesus was silent in the midst of His ignominies and suffering.

--St. Paul of the Cross

QUOTATION: Truth

Christ said, 'I am the Truth'; he did not say 'I am the custom.'

--St. Toribio de Mongrovejo

QUOTATION: Our Existence is Special

We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary.


-- Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Mortification

Believe me that the mortification of the senses in seeing, hearing, and speaking, is worth much more than wearing chains or haircloth. 

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Correction

To be pleased at correction and reproofs shows that one loves the virtues which are contrary to those faults for which he is corrected and reproved. And, therefore, it is a great sign of advancement in perfection.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Perfection in One's Vocation

To be perfect in our vocation is nothing else than to fulfil the duties which our state of life obliges us to perform, and to accomplish them well, and only for the honor and love of God.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: The Sanctification of Society

Sanctify yourself and you will sanctify society.

--St. Francis of Assisi

QUOTATION: Proof of Love

The proof of love is in the works. Where love exists, it works great things. But when it ceases to act, it ceases to exist.

--Pope St. Gregory the Great

QUOTATION: Love of God and Salvation

He who does not acquire the love of God will scarcely persevere in the grace of God, for it is very difficult to renounce sin merely through fear of chastisement.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori

QUOTATION: Charity

If we are to enter the church day and night and implore God to hear our prayers, how careful should we be to hear and grant the petitions of our neighbor in need.

--St. John the Almoner

QUOTATION: Moral Doctrine

The Church, in her life and teaching, is thus revealed as "the pillar and bulwark of the truth" (1 Tm 3:15), including the truth regarding moral action.

--Pope John Paul II

QUOTATION: The Blessed Sacrament

We should consider those moments spent before the Blessed Sacrament as the happiest of our lives.

--St. Jean Vianney, the Cure of Ars.

QUOTATION: Practical Atheism

What does it avail to know that there is a God, which you not only believe by Faith, but also know by reason: what does it avail that you know Him if you think little of Him?

--St. Thomas More