QUOTATION: Closeness to God

The closer a person is to God, the closer he is to people.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Holiness

Not all saints have the same sort of holiness. There are those who could never have lived with other saints. Not all have the same path. But all arrive at God.

--St. Jean Vianney

QUOTATION: Sins

Our sins, then, do not prevent us from becoming saints; God offers us readily every assistance if we only desire it and ask it. What more remains? It remains for us to give ourselves entirely to God, and to devote to his love at least the remainder of our days in this life.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Incarnation, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ

QUOTATION: Holiness

The holiness of saints does not depend on anything sensational but on little things which seem but trifles in the eyes of the world.

--Pope St. John XXIII, Journal of a Soul

QUOTATION: Holiness is Necessary for Salvation

Surely, if we are to be saved, it is not by keeping ourselves just above the line of reprobation, and living without any anxiety and struggle to serve God with a perfect heart.

--Blessed John Henry Newman

QUOTATION: Holiness

The holier I become the more souls I can draw to God. Each of us has a certain number of souls dependent on us for salvation. The holier I become, the closer they will draw to God.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Where There is Love, There is God, Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C., Ed.

QUOTATION: Meekness

Sanctity that is not meek is not true.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Fabricated Sanctity

Many, on the other hand, fabricate a sort of sanctity according to their own inclinations; some, inclined to melancholy, make sanctity consist in living in seclusion; others, of a busy temperament, in preaching and in making up quarrels; some, of an austere nature, in penitential inflictions and macerations; others, who are naturally generous, in distributing alms; some in saying many vocal prayers; others in visiting sanctuaries; and all their sanctity consists in such or the like practices. External acts are the fruit of the love of Jesus Christ; but true love itself consists in a complete conformity to the will of God; and as a consequence of this, in deny ing ourselves and in preferring what is most pleasing to God, and solely because he deserves it.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: Saving Souls

To save souls we must be holy: God does not use dirty tools.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: The Essentials

I have to seek only the glory of God, my own sanctification, and the salvation of my neighbor. I should therefore devote myself to these things, if necessary, at the peril of my life.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori

QUOTATION: Progress in Holiness

The more holy we become and rise toward God, the more are we combated and dragged down by self-love.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Holiness

It is not those who commit the least number of faults, that are the most holy, but those who have the greatest courage, the greatest generosity, the greatest love, who make the boldest efforts to overcome themselves, and are not immoderately apprehensive of tripping, or even of falling and being dirtied a little, provided they advance.

--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts

QUOTATION: How Not to Pursue Holiness

The mistake is, that some indeed wish to become saints, but after their own fashion; they would love Jesus Christ, but in their own way, without forsaking those diversions, that vanity of dress, those delicacies in food : they love God, but if they do not succeed in obtaining such or such an office, they live discontented; if, too, they happen to be touched in point of esteem, they are all on fire; if they do not recover from an illness, they lose all patience. They love God; but they refuse to let go that attachment for the riches, the honors of the world, for the vainglory of being reckoned of good family, of great learning, and better than others. Such as these practise prayer, and frequent Holy Communion; but inasmuch as they take with them hearts full of earth, they derive little profit. Our Lord does not even speak to them, for he knows that it is but a waste of words.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: Holiness

The closer a person approaches God, the less worthy he feels. A painting under candle light shows fewer defects than under the brilliance of the sun; so too the souls who are some distance from God feel more certain of their moral integrity than those who are very close to Him. In the presence of the holiest of creatures, the soul becomes self-accusing and broken-hearted with the weight of its defects. He who loves God is the most burdened with the sense of his own unworthiness.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Life of Christ

QUOTATION: Holy Envy

Hence we must distinguish two kinds of envy, one evil and the other holy. The evil kind is that which envies and repines at the worldly goods possessed by others on this earth. But holy envy, so far from wishing to be like, rather compassionates the great ones of the world, who live in the midst of honors and earthly pleasures. She seeks and desires God alone, and has no other aim besides that of loving him as much as she can; and therefore she has a pious envy of those who love him more than she does, for she would, if possible, surpass the very seraphim in loving him. 

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: Holiness

You must be holy in the way that God asks you to be holy. God does not ask you to be a Trappist monk or a hermit. He wills that you sanctify the world and your everyday life.

--St. Vincent Pallotti

QUOTATION: Holiness

The greater the progress the soul makes on the way of Christian perfection, the more convinced it is not only of being "unworthy" but also deserving of hell.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Holy Women

QUOTATION: Holiness

Look at Saint Jerome, after twenty years passed in the sacred grotto of Bethlehem, transported again in imagination to the dances of Rome! It is not solitude that makes saints, but the will. The devil haunts hermitages, as well as great cities.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Holiness

Holiness is not something extraordinary, not something for only a few with brains, with intellectual powers that can reason, that can discuss, that can have long talks and read very wonderful books. Holiness is for every one of us as a simple duty - the acceptance of God with a smile, at all times, anywhere and everywhere.

--Mother Teresa

QUOTATION: Accepting God's Providence

If you embrace all things in this life as coming from the hands of God, and even embrace death to fulfill His holy will, assuredly you will die a saint.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori