QUOTATION: Neighbour

Once a man ceases to be of service to his neighbor, he begins to be a burden to him; it is only a step from refusing to live with others to refusing to live for others.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Peace of Soul, 1949

QUOTATION: Speech

Henceforward consider your neighbor's character as a forbidden tree which you cannot touch. Be no less slow in praising yourself

than in censuring others, for the first indicates vanity and the second a want of charity. Speak of the virtues of your neighbor, but be silent as to his faults. Let nothing that you say lead others to think that he is naught but a man of virtue and honor. You will thus avoid innumerable sins and much remorse of conscience; you will be pleasing to God and men; and you will be respected by all as you respect others.

--Louis de Granada, The Sinner's Guide

QUOTATION: Patience

If you behold God in the neighbor, you will put up with his defects, you will reprove him without sharpness, you will treat him as you would have treated Jesus Christ going to Calvary laden with His Cross; you will pity his misery, and it will not irritate you; you will patiently and kindly render him service, and for all this you must love God in him.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Penance

Penance does not require hair shirts today; our neighbors are hair shirts.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Hating Our Neighbour's Faults

Too much hatred of our neighbor's faults begets more aversion than amendment, and, far from helping him, puts him to flight.

--St. Ignatius Loyola

QUOTATION: Love of Neighbour

We can never love our neighbour too much.

--St. Francis de Sales, Spiritual Conferences, 4

QUOTATION: Devotion and Love of Neighbour

If I have no contact whatsoever with God in my life, then I cannot see in the other anything more than the other, and I am incapable of seeing in him the image of God. But if in my life I fail completely to heed others, solely out of a desire to be “devout” and to perform my “religious duties”, then my relationship with God will also grow arid. It becomes merely “proper”, but loveless. Only my readiness to encounter my neighbour and to show him love makes me sensitive to God as well.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, #18

QUOTATION: Love of God Makes Love of Neighbour Possible

Love of neighbour is thus shown to be possible in the way proclaimed by the Bible, by Jesus. It consists in the very fact that, in God and with God, I love even the person whom I do not like or even know. This can only take place on the basis of an intimate encounter with God, an encounter which has become a communion of will, even affecting my feelings. Then I learn to look on this other person not simply with my eyes and my feelings, but from the perspective of Jesus Christ.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est, #18