QUOTATION: Bad Clergy is God's Punishment

The most evident mark of God's anger, and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world, is manifest when He permits His people to fall into the hands of a clergy who are more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds. They abandon the things of God to devote themselves to the things of the world, and in their saintly calling of holiness, they spend their time in profane and worldly pursuits. When God permits such things, it is a very positive proof that He is thoroughly angry with His people and is visiting His most dreadful wrath upon them.

--St. John Eudes

QUOTATION: Prayer

Prayer is a respectful and loving elevation of your mind and heart to God. It is a joyous meeting, a holy communication, a Divine conversation between God and the Christian.

In it the soul considers and contemplates its Creator in His Divine perfections, in His mysteries and in His works; it adores and blesses Him, loves and glorifies Him, gives itself to Him, is abased before Him at the sight of its sins and ingratitude. It implores Him to be merciful, and learns to become like Him by imitating His Divine virtues and perfections, and finally asks for all the things necessary to serve and love Him.

Prayer is a participation in the life of the angels and saints, in the life of Jesus Christ and of His most holy Mother, even of the life of God and of the Three Divine Persons. For the life of the Angels and Saints, of Christ, and of His most holy Mother is nothing else but a continual practice of prayer and contemplation, in which their uninterrupted occupation is to look upon God, to praise and love Him, to ask Him, on your behalf, for the things you need. And the existence of the Three Divine Persons is a perpetual contemplation, praise and love of one another, which is accomplished first and foremost by prayer.

Prayer is perfect delight, supreme happiness, a true earthly paradise. It is by this Divine exercise of prayer that the Christian soul is united to God, Who is the center of its being, its goal and its supreme good. It is in prayer that God belongs to the soul and the soul to God. It is by praying that the soul pays Him rightful service, homage, adoration and love, and receives from Him His lights, His blessings and a thousand tokens of His exceeding great love.

It is during your prayers that God takes His delight in you, according to this word of His: "My delights are to be with the children of men" (Prov. 8, 31), and gives us an experimental knowledge of the fact that our true joy and perfect satisfaction are to be found in God, and that a hundred, or even a thousand years of the false pleasures of this world are not worth one moment of the true delights which God allows those souls to taste, who seek all their contentment only in conversing with Him in holy prayer.

Finally, prayer is the most worthy, the noblest, the loftiest, greatest and most important act in which you can engage your efforts, for it is the ceaseless occupation of the Angels and Saints, of the Blessed Virgin, of Jesus and of the Most Holy Trinity throughout all the vastness of eternity.

It is also destined to be our own unending activity in Heaven. Indeed, this is the one true and proper function of a man and of a Christian, since man is created for God and to be with God, and the Christian is on earth only for the purpose of continuing what Jesus Christ did during His life.

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

QUOTATION: Spiritual Reading in Prayer

The fourth method of prayer is to read good books, reading them, however, not in haste, but taking your time, and applying your mind to what you are reading, stopping to consider and turning over in your thoughts the truths that strike you most forcefully, in order to impress them on your mind so as to derive specific acts of virtue and profitable resolutions.

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

QUOTATION: Giving Up One's Own Opinion

Whenever an occasion of disagreement arises because of natural differences of opinion, no matter how sure you may be that you are right, be glad to give up your own opinion and yield to that of someone else, provided the glory of God be not concerned in the matter.

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

QUOTATION: Friends

Do not make friends with any persons except those whom you can help, or those who can help you and animate you, by word and example, to love Jesus and live in His spirit.

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

QUOTATION: Friendship with the World

As long as you seek out and love the company of men of the world, Jesus Christ whose delight it is to be with the children of men will not take His delight in you and will not give you any taste of the consolations with which He refreshes those who find all their joy in conversing with Him.

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

QUOTATION: Venial Sin

For you must keep in mind that the shedding of Our Lord's blood and the sacrifice of His life were just as necessary to wipe out venial sin as to deliver you from mortal sin. Remember that anyone who attaches little importance to venial sin will soon fall into mortal sin. If you do not find these resolutions in you own soul, pray to Our Lord to put them there, and do not rest until you possess these dispositions. For you ought to know that 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: 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: God's Hatred of Sin

When the Eternal Father saw His Own Son, His only well-beloved Son, most holy and most innocent, laden with the sins of others, He did not spare Him, as St. Paul says, but delivered Him up for us to the Cross and to death (Rom. 8, 32), so abominable and execrable is sin in His sight.

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

QUOTATION: God's Love for You and His Hatred of Sin

Now Jesus Christ entertained in Himself two widely opposed sentiments:

One of infinite love for His Father and for you, the other of extreme hatred for everything opposed to His Father's glory and your salvation, namely, for sin.

Since He loves His Father and you with an infinite love, He hates sin with an infinite hatred.

He so loved His Father, and so loves you, that He performed great miracles, suffered sorrowful torments, and gave up a precious life for His Father's glory and your love.

On the other hand, He holds sin in so great horror that He came down from Heaven, taking the form of a servant, and for thirty-three years He lived on earth a life of labor, of humiliation and of suffering; He shed His Blood even to the last drop; He died the most shameful and most cruel of all deaths, all for His hatred of sin, because of His intense desire to destroy all sin in you.

Now you must see to it that these same sentiments of Christ with regard to His Father and to sin continue in yourself.

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

QUOTATION: Zeal

Similarly, although you must exert all your energy in trying to conquer your passions, vices and imperfections, and to became master of every kind of virtue, you must nevertheless, work at this without being carried away by your zeal. So that when you do not perceive in yourself as many virtues, or as much love of God as you would like to see, you may remain at peace and undisturbed, humiliating yourself because of the obstacles you yourself have placed in the path of virtue.

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

QUOTATION: Jesus Delights in You

Therefore, with all my power, I urge every one of you who read these words, and in God's name I adjure you, since our Dear Jesus condescends to take His delight in being with you and speaking to you through prayer, do not deprive Him of His satisfaction, but learn by your own experience that like holy wisdom, His conversation has no bitterness, nor His company any tediousness, but joy and gladness. (Wis. 8, 16).

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

QUOTATION: Consolation

When God allows you to feel the sweetness of His kindness in your devotions, you must be careful not to become attached to this consolation. You must humble yourself at once, considering yourself most unworthy of any consolation, and ready to be stripped of it, to assure Him that you desire to serve and love Him, not for the consolation that He gives, either in this world or in the next, but for love of Himself and merely to please Him.

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

QUOTATION: Mortification

When something occurs that mortifies your body or spirit, or when you see an occasion to deprive yourself of some satisfaction (such occasions present themselves hourly), accept it with a ready welcome, for the love of Our Lord, and bless Him for giving you an opportunity to mortify you self-love, in honor of His mortifications and privations on earth.

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

QUOTATION: Praise

When someone gives you a word of praise, refer it to Him Who is alone worthy of all honor saying: "O my glory, I desire no other glory but Thine forever. To Thee alone is due all praise, honor and glory, and to me all abjection, shame and humiliation."

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

QUOTATION: The Mercy of Jesus

All our tribulations were present to our merciful Saviour at the very first moment of His life and He resolved so firmly, ardently and steadfastly at that time to help us free ourselves from them and He so faithfully preserved this intention in His heart from the first to the last instant of His life, that all the most atrocious cruelties and tortures that wretched men, to whom Christ was so wonderfully good, caused Him to suffer while He was on earth, as well as all His prescience of the ingratitude, outrages and crimes with which we would repay His adorable mercy, were not capable of cooling even slightly the ardor and strength of His will to show mercy to mankind.

--St. John Eudes, The Admirable Heart of Mary

QUOTATION: Prayer

The air which we breathe, the bread which we eat, the heart which throbs in our bosoms, are not more necessary for man that he may live as a human being, than is prayer for the Christian that he may live as a Christian.

--St. John Eudes