QUOTATION: Sacrifice

A sacrifice foreseen makes us reason, and reasoning diminishes its value. But those that we make generously, without premeditation and without deliberation, are of more value.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard, Month of Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament

QUOTATION: Sacrifice

Christian sacrifice does not consist in a giving of what God would not have without us but in our becoming totally receptive and letting ourselves be completely taken over him. Letting God act on us-- that is Christian sacrifice.

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

QUOTATION: Prayers and Sacrifices

Just as the clouds will pick up moisture from the sea and carry it over a mountaintop and then drop it on arid land, so too the prayers and sacrifices that we offer are carried by the Holy Spirit and dropped on other souls that need it.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Christ's Sacrifice

During the supper, Jesus immolated Himself; on the Cross, He was immolated by others

--St. Ephraim, Hymn on the Crucifixion as quoted by Pope Benedict XVI, Homily on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, June 11, 2009.

QUOTATION: Illness as Sacrifice

The bed of the sick is an altar of sacrifice . . . Happy is the just man who disturbs not the sacrifice by his murmurs and his cries, who adores the beneficent hand that is hidden under the instruments which is vouchsafes to employ, who blesses the salutary strokes, who feels the honour of the distinction! How brilliant will his soul depart from the crucible of tribulation! It is as gold tried seven times, it is marked with the seal of the elect, it bears the impress of Jesus Christ.

--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts

QUOTATION: Sacrifices

Normally the sacrifices that our Lord asks of us, even the most difficult ones, refer to tiny details, but they are as continuous and invaluable as the beating of our hearts.

--St. Josemaria Escriva

QUOTATION: Evangelization

It is only by sacrifice and suffering, offered as penance, that you will be able, by the grace of God, to convert sinners.

--St. Jean Vianney, the Curé of Ars

QUOTATION: God's Sacrifice

What father ever gave up his son to death for the sake of his slave!

--St Catherine of Siena

QUOTATION: Sacrifice

The fewer sacrifices a man is required to make, the more loath he will be to make those few.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Renunciation

You will lose nothing of what you have renounced for the Lord's sake. For in its own time it will return to you greatly multiplied.

--St. Mark the Ascetic

QUOTATION: Female Sacrifice

A woman is capable of more sacrifices than a man. Man is more apt to be a hero, through some great passionate outburst of heroism. But a woman's love makes a thousand small sacrifices, sprinkling them through the days and the months; their very repetition gives them the character of the commonplace. Not only her soul, but her body, has some share in the Calvary of Redemption; furthermore, she comes closer to death than man, whenever she brings forth a child.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Life is Worth Living

QUOTATION: Obedience

Obedience, is rightly placed before all other sacrifices, for in offering a victim as sacrifice, one offers a life that is not one’s own; but when one obeys one is immolating one’s own will.

--Pope St. Gregory the Great

QUOTATION: Prayer

We do not know the number of souls that is ours to save through our prayers and sacrifices; therefore, let us always pray for sinners.

--St. Faustina, Divine Mercy in my Soul

QUOTATION: Sacrifice

No Ideal becomes reality without sacrifice. Deny yourself. It is so beautiful to be a victim!

--St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way

QUOTATION: Evangelical Zeal

No sacrifice is more acceptable to God than zeal for souls.

--Pope St. Gregory I

QUOTATION: The Body as Sacrifice

Our body is also a sacrifice when we discipline it by temperance, provided that we this as we ought for the sake of God, so that we may not offer our bodily powers to the service of sin as instruments of iniquity, but to the service of God as instruments of righteousness.

--St. Augustine, City of God, 10:6