QUOTATION: No Mary, No Jesus

If we want to be Christian, we must be Marian.

--Pope Francis

QUOTATION: Christianity is the Source of the West's Greatness

The false idea of the superiority of certain races and classes is due to the forgetfulness of the spiritual foundations of equality. We of the Western world have been rightly proud of the fact that we have a civilization superior to others. But we have given the wrong reason for that superiority. We assume that we are superior because we are white. We are not. We are superior because we are Christians. The moment we cease to be Christian, we will revert to the barbarism from which we came.

--Fulton J. Sheen, Preface to Religion

QUOTATION: When You Decide to Become a Serious Christian...

As soon as the children of this world perceive that you desire to follow a devout life they will shoot at you a thousand arrows of mockery and detraction. The most malicious will calumniate your change as being hypocrisy, bigotry, and artifice. They will say that the world has frowned on you and that being rejected by it you turned to God. Your friends will make a world of objections which they imagine to be very wise and charitable. They will tell you that you will fall into a melancholy state of mind; that you will lose credit in the world; that will you will make yourself insupportable; that you will grow old before your time; that your domestic affairs will suffer; that you must live in the world like one in the world; that salvation may be had without so many mysteries; and a thousand similar trivialities. 

My Philothea, all this is nothing but foolish and empty babbling. These people are not interested in your health or in your welfare. “If you had been of the world,” says the Savior, “the world would love its own; but because you are not of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” We have seen gentlemen and ladies pass the whole night, even many nights, together at chess or cards. Is there any concentration more absurd, stupid, or gloomy, than that of gamesters? Yet worldly people do not say a word, nor do their friends ever trouble themselves about them. Should we spend an hour in meditation, or rise in the morning a little earlier than usual in order to prepare ourselves for Communion, every one runs for a physician to cure us of our hypochondria and jaundice. Such persons can pass thirty nights in dancing without experiencing any inconvenience; but if they watch a single Christmas night, every one of them coughs and complains that he is sick the next morning. Who does not see that the world is an unjust judge, gracious and favorable to its own children, but harsh and rigorous toward the children of God?

--St. Francis de Sales, Introduction to the Devout Life.

QUOTATION: Being a Christian

Being a Christian means essentially changing over from being for oneself to being for one another.

--Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity, 1968

QUOTATION: The Real Test of a Christian

The real test of the Christian is not how much he loves his friends, but how much he loves his enemies.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: The Christian Copernican Revolution

Being a Christian means having love; it means achieving the Copernican revolution in our own existence, by which we cease to make ourselves the center of the universe, with everyone else revolving around us.

—Joseph Ratzinger, (Pope Benedict XVI)

QUOTATION: The Christian Glories in the Past

Does not the soldier exult in his commander, and consider his triumph as his own? He is but one, yet he identifies himself with the army, and the cause in which he serves, and dwells upon the thought of victories, and those who win them, more than on casual losses and defeats. Does not a native of a powerful country feel it a joy and boast to be so? Do we not hear men glory in being born Englishmen? And they go to and fro, gazing on the works of their own days, and the monuments of their forefathers, and say to themselves that their race is a noble one. Much more fully, much more reasonably is this the boast of a Christian, and without aught of arrogant or carnal feeling. He knows, from God's word, that he is "citizen of no mean city." He feels that his is no upstart line, but very ancient; Almighty God having purposed to bring many sons unto glory through His Son, and begetting them again, in their separate ages, to do Him service. He is one of a host, and all those blessed Saints he reads of are his brethren in the faith. He finds, in the history of the past, a peculiar kind of consolation, counteracting the influence of the world that is seen. He cannot tell who the Saints are now on earth; those yet unborn are known to God only; but the Saints of former times are sealed for heaven and are in their degree revealed to him. The spirits of the just made perfect encourage him to follow them. This is why it is a Christian's characteristic to look back on former times. The man of this world lives in the present, or speculates about the future; but faith rests upon the past and is content. It makes the past the mirror of the future. It recounts the list of faithful servants of God, (...)  and no longer feels sad as if it were alone. Abraham and the Patriarchs, Moses, Samuel, and the prophets, David and the kings who walked in his steps, these are the Christian's forefathers. 

--Blessed John Henry Newman, "The Visible Church an Encouragement to Faith, " Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 3

QUOTATION: Indifference Towards the Fate of Souls

There is nothing colder than a Christian who is unconcerned about the salvation of others.

--St. John Chrysostom

QUOTATION: Christian and Catholic

Whosoever is of the true faith of Christ, may justly say, Christian is my name, Catholic my surname: a greater honour, and a greater advantage, than to be of any royal family.

--St. Augustine, On the Profit of Believing, Chapter 8

QUOTATION: To Be a Real Christian

As long as you do not have the will to die or suffer every kind of disgrace and torture rather than commit any sin, you are not a true Christian

--St. John Eudes, The Four Foundations of Sanctity

QUOTATION: Faith Isn't a Set of Rules

Christian life can never be reduced to an oppressive set of rules which leave the soul in a state of exasperation and tension. Rather, it accommodates itself to individual circumstances as a glove fits the hand, and it says that, as well as praying and sacrificing ourselves constantly, we should never lose our supernatural outlook as we go about our everyday tasks, be they big or small.

--Josemaria Escriva, Friends of God, 137

QUOTATION: The Servant is not Greater than his Master

True followers of Christ, be prepared to have a world make jokes at your expense. You can hardly expect a world to be more reverent to you than to Our Lord. When it does make fun of your faith, its practices, abstinences, and rituals — then you are moving to a closer identity with Him Who gave us our faith. Under scorn, Our Lord “answered nothing”. The world gets amusement from a Christian who fails to be Christian, but none from his respectful silence.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Faith is not a Brand

In the gospel, Jesus tells us that to be a Christian is not to have a ‘label’ but to live and testify to faith in prayer, in works of charity, in the promotion of justice, in doing good.

--Pope Francis