QUOTATION: Faith and Our Weaknesses

Faith, if it be true and lively, both precludes transgressions and gradually triumphs over infirmities; and while infirmities continue, it regards them with so perfect an hatred, as avails for their forgiveness, and is taken for that righteousness which it is gradually becoming. And such is a holy doctrine; for it provides for our pardon without dispensing with our obedience.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, “Transgressions and Infirmities”, Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 5

QUOTATION: Be Brave

Start being brave about everything, driving out darkness and spreading light as well. Don’t look at your weakness, but realize that in Christ crucified you can do everything.

--St. Catherine of Siena

QUOTATION: Trials

In sending us trials, God proportions them to our weakness.

--St. Mary Euphrasia Pelletier, Conferences and Instructions

QUOTATION: Our Spiritual Poverty

If we knew the depth of our poverty, we would not be at all surprised by our falls, but rather astonished, and we would thank God, after sinning, for not allowing us to fall even deeper and still more frequently.

--St. Maximillian Kolbe

QUOTATION: Fight One's Own Weaknesses

Against one's innate misery, against that weakness it entails, which mounts not upward, which incessantly falls back on self, neither struggle nor violence must be employed, but the humility and the patience of meekness. One must accept his state just as it is, and take it to God in the same way. You are weak in mind, and still more in heart? Offer that to God. Otherwise, what will you do? We cannot kill ourselves to change ourselves. In vain, will you be angry against yourself and vex yourself for not being perfect.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Be Kind to Yourself

A poor person comes to you. You give him an alms, because of his need, without inquiring into the cause, more or less legitimate, of his poverty. To what purpose would you inquire and discuss? He is poor, you receive him as such, and give him charity. Treat yourself in the same way. Your spiritual weakness and indigence are the condition of humility for you. Accept your impotence with meekness. That will engender a certain peace, which will sufficiently unite you with God.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Tolerance of One's Faults

Some there are who shake hands with their faults, and from that springs their ruin; especially when the fault is accompanied with some passionate attachment of self-esteem, of ambition, of liking to be seen, of heaping up money, of resentment against a neighbor, or of inordinate affection for a person of different sex.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: Human Frailty

From the lukewarmness that is unavoidable, the saints themselves are not exempt; and this comprises all the failings that are committed by us without full consent, but merely from our natural frailty. Such are, for example, distractions at prayers, interior disquietudes, useless words, vain curiosity, the wish to appear, tastes in eating and drinking, the movements of concupiscence not instantly repressed, and such like. We ought to avoid these defects as much as we possibly can; but, owing to the weakness of our nature, caused by the infection of sin, it is impossible to avoid them altogether.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: Weaknesses

God can use our weakness as easily as our strength in order to accomplish His will.

--Pope John Paul II