QUOTATION: Purgatory

It would be preferable to suffer all the possible torments of Earth until the Judgment Day than pass one day in Purgatory.

--St. Cyril of Alexandria

QUOTATION: Catholic Social Ministry

Everything in Catholic social ministry begins and ends with Jesus Christ. If it doesn’t, it isn’t Catholic. And if our social work isn’t deeply, confidently and explicitly Catholic in its identity, then we should stop using the word ‘Catholic.’ It’s that simple.

Faith in Jesus Christ — not as the world likes to imagine him, but the true Son of God as the Catholic Church knows and preaches him — is the only enduring basis for human hope. Real hope has nothing to do with empty political slogans. It has nothing to do with our American addictions to progress or optimism or positive thinking

--Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

QUOTATION: Distress

The self-indulgent are distressed by criticism and hardship; those who love God by praise and luxury.

--St. Mark the Ascetic

QUOTATION: God's Eternal Love for You

Consider the eternal love which God has borne towards you; for already, long before Jesus Christ had suffered for you on the cross as Man, His divine Majesty destined you to life, and loved you infinitely. But when did He begin to love you? When He began to be God. And when did He begin to be God? Never; He has always been, without beginning and without end; and thus He has always loved you, and it is from all eternity that His love prepared for you the graces and favours which He has given you.

--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts

QUOTATION: Prayer

In order at length to pray well, we must begin by praying ill, since ill is all we can do. Is not this plain? Who, in the case of any other work, would wait till he could do it perfectly, before he tried it? The idea is absurd.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, “Forms of Private Prayer”, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Volume 1.

QUOTATION: Silence

Never make a noise of any sort in church, except for the greatest necessity.

--St. Philip Neri

QUOTATION: Conversion

Man is the recipient of the Divine Mercy, yet this does not exonerate him from the need to be transformed.

-- Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Holy Communion

In order that the earthly food may be of benefit to us, we must eat it when we are hungry; in like manner, in order that Communion may produce in us much fruit, we should receive it with great desire to possess Jesus Christ and to love him ardently.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: The Wiles of the Devil

That he may prevent us from doing a good work, the devil often suggests a greater one; but he understands well how to prevent its execution afterwards, by new obstacles.

--St. Ignatius Loyola

QUOTATION: Sacrifice

The fewer sacrifices a man is required to make, the more loath he will be to make those few.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Obedience

The more contemptible the Superior may be, the more pleasing to God is the humility of him who obeys.

--St. Francis of Assisi

QUOTATION: Misleading Emotions

Some people when praised for their virtue are delighted, and attribute this pleasurable feeling of self-esteem to grace. Others when reproved for their sins are pained, and they mistake this beneficial pain for the action of sin.

--St. Mark the Ascetic

QUOTATION: Evangelization

No one becomes a Christian alone.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Dogma and Preaching

QUOTATION: God's Mercy

If God had not created man, He would have truly been all-good, but He would not have been actually merciful, because mercy is exercised only towards the miserable.

--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts

QUOTATION: No Pain, No Gain

Can you expect to go to Heaven for nothing? Did not our dear Savior track the whole way to it with His Blood and tears?

--St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

QUOTATION: Mass for Expiation of Sins

By the oblation of Jesus Christ in the Mass, we offer to God a complete satisfaction for all the sins of men, and especially for the sins of those who are present at Mass ; to whom is applied the same divine blood, by which the human race was redeemed on Calvary.

Thus, by each Mass more satisfaction is made to God than by any other expiatory work. But although the Mass is of infinite value, God accepts it only in a finite manner, according to the dispositions of those who attend the holy sacrifice, and, therefore, it is useful to hear several Masses.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: Formal Prayers

Forms of prayer are necessary to guard us against the irreverence of wandering thoughts. If we pray without set words (read or remembered), our minds will stray from the subject; other thoughts will cross us, and we shall pursue them; we shall lose sight of His presence whom we are addressing. This wandering of mind is in good measure prevented, under God's blessing, by Forms of prayer. Thus a chief use of them is that of fixing the attention.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, “Forms of Private Prayer”, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Volume 1.

QUOTATION: Heaven

But what will it be to behold hereafter so many angels, so many just men, to be united with them in the closest friendship, and to be made partakers of their happiness? Were we to behold, in this our exile, one angel arrayed in all his beauty, who would not eagerly wish to meet him? What therefore must it be, to behold all the angels in one place? And if only one of the prophets, apostles, or doctors of the Church were to descend from heaven, with what curiosity and attention would he be heard! Now in the kingdom of God, we shall be allowed to behold not one only, but all the prophets, apostles, and doctors, with whom we shall continually hold sweet converse.

--St. Robert Bellarmine, The Eternal Happiness of the Saints

QUOTATION: Self-Righetousness

No man has need of religion who is self-righteous. Anarchists have no need of law; they are law unto themselves. Hitler had no need of God: in his own conceit he was a god. The man who never made a mistake has no need of an eraser; just so the man who has never done anything wrong has no need of a Redeemer.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Wartime Prayer Book

QUOTATION: Overpopulation

The answer to anyone who talks about the surplus population is to ask him whether he is the surplus population; or if he is not, how he knows he is not.

--G.K. Chesterton, Introduction to A Christmas Carol

QUOTATION: Self-Love

No one has perfectly renounced the world who reserves the most secret place in his heart for his self-love.

--St. Francis of Assisi

QUOTATION: Renunciation

You will lose nothing of what you have renounced for the Lord's sake. For in its own time it will return to you greatly multiplied.

--St. Mark the Ascetic

QUOTATION: Obedience

They who, by a generous effort, make up their minds to obey, acquire great merit; for obedience by its sacrifices resembles martyrdom.

--St. Ignatius Loyola

QUOTATION: Self-Mastery

Control your appetites before they control you.

--St. John Climacus

QUOTATION: Warning About Hell

If I saw anyone about to fall into a pit or a fire, would I not run up to him and warn him, and do all in my power to help him from falling in? Why should I not do this much to keep sinners from falling into the pit and fires of Hell?

Neither can I understand why other priests who believe the selfsame truths as I do, as we all must do, do not preach or exhort their flock so that they might avoid this unbearable eternity of Hell. It is still a source of wonder to me how the laity - those men and women blessed with the Faith - do not give warning to those who need it. If a house were to catch fire in the middle of the night, and if the inhabitants of the same house and the other townsfolk were asleep and did not see the danger, would not the one who first noticed it shout and run along the streets, exclaiming: "Fire! Fire! In that house over there!" Then why should there not be a warning of eternal fire to waken those who are drifting in the sleep of sin in such a way that when they open their eyes they will find themselves burning in the eternal flames of Hell?

--St. Anthony Mary Claret, Autobiograpy

QUOTATION: Proof of the Afterlife

God would not have given us souls capable of contemplating and desiring holy eternity, if He had not intended to bestow on us the means of obtaining it.

--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts

QUOTATION: The Speech of Angels

Christianity has always understood that the speech of angels is actually song, in which all the glory of the great joy they proclaim becomes tangibly present.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

QUOTATION: Prayer before the Examination of Conscience

Mother of my God, who art so charitable to sinners that desire to repent, assist me by thy intercession. My guardian angel, who hast been a spectator of all my crimes, help me to discover the sins which I have committed against my God. All ye saints of heaven, pray for me, that I may bring forth fruits of penance. Amen.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: The Invincible Church

The one and only Catholic and Apostolic Church can never be destroyed, though all the world should seek to make war against it. It is victorious over every impious revolt of the heretics who rise up against it.

--St. Alexander of Alexandria

QUOTATION: The Man Who Disdains Revelation

A man who fancies he can find out truth by himself, disdains revelation. He who thinks he has found it out, is impatient of revelation. He fears it will interfere with his own imaginary discoveries, he is unwilling to consult it; and when it does interfere, then he is angry.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, “The Self-Wise Enquirer”, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Volume 1.

QUOTATION: Why Judas?

And although He kept a purse, yet He entrusted it to Judas, who He knew to be a thief, that so we might comprehend how free His soul was from the love of money.

--St. Robert Bellarmine, The Eternal Happiness of the Saints

QUOTATION: Christianity

Christianity seems at first to be about morality, rules, guilt and virtue, yet it leads you out of that, into something beyond.

--C.S. Lewis

QUOTATION: Life is Sacred

I do not hesitate to proclaim before you and before the world that all human life, from the moment of conception and through all subsequent stages, is sacred, because human life is created in the image and likeness of God. Nothing surpasses the greatness or dignity of a human person. Human life is not just an idea or an abstraction, human life is the concrete reality of a being that lives, that acts, that grows and develops, human life is the concrete reality of a being that is capable of love and of service to humanity. Human life is precious because it is the gift of a God whose love is infinite and when God gives life, it it forever.

--Pope John Paul II, Homily, Capitol Hill, Washington D.C., 1979