QUOTATION: The Apostles

The apostles wouldn’t pass the seminary today. Heck, I doubt if they’d make it past the psychological screening.

--Mother Angelica

QUOTATION: The Only Time The Lord Asked The Apostles Anything

The only time our Lord asked the Apostles for anything, was the night He went into agony. Not for activity did He plead but for an Hour of Companionship.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Venial Sin

Considered, besides, in its effects on us, how sad is venial sin! See what it did in the Apostles. For three years they had lived with Our Lord, seeing Him, listening to Him, rejoicing in His miracles and in His particular and private explanations. Did they profit by them? Not at all. They did not even go so far as to correct themselves of their defects. Their ambition, their jealousy, their self-love still domineered them. What, then, was the obstacle? Venial sin, for the Gospel records their faults, and they were but venial faults, only venial faults. But see, whither they conducted. Behold them fleeing from the Garden of Olives, and Peter denying his Master. Judas, also, had lived with Our Lord, and his infidelity began with only small faults of cupidity.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: The Apostle John

We may wonder how both the sons of Zebedee, James and John, came to drink from the chalice of martyrdom, since Scripture tells us only that the apostle James was decapitated by Herod. John, on the other hand, died a natural death. But in the history of the Church we are told that he was to be martyred in a vat of boiling oil; an athlete of Christ, he was saved from the oil and banished to the island of Patmos. John too suffered martyrdom; he, like the three young men who stood in the burning fire, drank from the chalice of martyrdom, though his persecutor failed to spill his blood.

--St. Jerome, Commentary on Matthew, 20, 23.