QUOTATION: Prayer and Virtue

By humble and faithful prayer, the soul acquires, with time and perseverance, every virtue.

--St. Catherine of Siena

QUOTATION: Obedience

Obedience is, without a doubt, more meritorious than any austerity. And what greater austerity can be thought of than that of keeping one's will constantly submissive and obedient?

--St. Catherine of Bologna

QUOTATION: The Our Father

Much more is accomplished by a single word of the Our Father said, now and then, from our heart, than by the whole prayer repeated many times in haste and without attention.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: Perfection

The Lord chiefly desires of us that we should be completely perfect, that we may be wholly one with Him. Let us aim, therefore, at whatever we need to reach this. 

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: The tricks of the devil

The devil, seeing that there is no shorter road to the summit of perfection than that of obedience, artfully insinuates many repugnancies and difficulties under color of good, to prevent us from following it.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: Spiritual Dryness

If one wishes to acquire liberty of spirit, and not always walk in darkness, he should feel no trouble in regard to aridities, disquiets, distractions, or involuntary thoughts.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: Mortification

Upon interior mortification depends the right adjustment of our whole exterior, its arrangement with most perfection, with sweetness and peace.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: The Necessity of Prayer

As our body cannot live with out nourishment, so our soul cannot spiritually be kept alive without prayer.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Suffering

If you see that you have not yet suffered tribulations, consider it certain that you have not begun to be a true servant of God; for St. Paul says plainly that all who chose to live piously in Christ, shall suffer persecutions.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Priests

It would certainly be better to have fewer ministers if they be upright, suitable and useful, than many who are likely to accomplish nothing at all for the building up of the body of Christ, which is the Church.

--Pope Benedict XIV, Ubi Primum

QUOTATION: Religious Zeal

Zeal without knowledge is always less useful and effective than regulated zeal, and very often it is highly dangerous.

--St. Bernard, Sermons on the Canticle of Canticles, 50.

QUOTATION: Evangelical Zeal

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

--Pope St. Gregory I

QUOTATION: Primacy of Peter

Peter, the leader of the choir, the mouth of all the apostles, the head of that tribe, the ruler of the whole world, the foundation of the Church, the ardent lover of Christ.

--St. John Chrysostom, Homily on 2 Timothy 3:1.

QUOTATION: Prayer

Prayer is conversation with God.

--St. Clement of Alexandria, Stomateis, 7.

QUOTATION: Prayer, Perseverance, Obedience

He greatly deceives himself who thinks that prayer perfects one without perseverance and obedience.

--St. Francis de Sales, Letters to the Persons in Religion, 3:44.

QUOTATION: Perseverance

Though perseverance does not come from our power, yet it comes within our power.

--St. Francis de Sales, Treatise on the Love of God, 3:4

QUOTATION: The Nature of Perfection

Perfection does not lie in not seeing the world, but in not tasting or relishing it.

--St. Francis de Sales, Letters to the Persons in the World, 6:52

QUOTATION: Perfection

No one is suddenly made perfect.

--Bede the Venerable, In Lucam, 4

QUOTATION: The Road to Perfection

If you would be perfect, sell your will and give it to the poor in spirit; come to Christ through meekness and humility; and follow Him to Calvary and the grave.

--St. John of the Cross, Spiritual Sentences and Maxims

QUOTATION: Obedience to a Superior

It is a very great thing to stand in obedience, to live under a superior, and not to be at our own disposal.

--Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ

QUOTATION: Emptying of Self

One of the greatest paradoxes of the mystical life is this: that a man cannot enter into the deepest center of himself and pass through that center into God unless he is able to pass entirely out of himself and empty himself and give himself to other people in the purity of selfless love.

--Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation

QUOTATION: The Nature of Mortification

We do not become perfect by the multiplication of exercises, penances and austerities, but rather by the purity of love with which we do them.

--St. Francis de Sales, Spiritual Conferences, 13

QUOTATION: Mortification

For mortification does not consist in macerating or killing the body, but in killing our perverse self-will.

--St. Catherine of Sienna

QUOTATION: Being Modern

To be merely modern is to condemn oneself to an ultimate narrowness; just as to spend one's last earthly money on the newest hat is to condemn oneself to the old-fashioned. The road of the ancient centuries is strewn with dead moderns.

--G.K. Chesterton, The Common Man

QUOTATION: Worthiness

Man is not worthy of God; but he is not incapable of being made worthy of Him.

--Blaise Pascal, Pensees.

QUOTATION: Freedom

The heart is free which is held by no love other than the love of God. 

--St. Bonaventure.

QUOTATION: Love and Suffering

There is no living in love without suffering.

--Thomas a Kempis, The Imitation of Christ, 3:5

QUOTATION: Avoiding the Hard Questions

Men, not having been able to cure death, misery and ignorance, have imagined to make themselves happy by not thinking of these things.

--Blaise Pascal, Pensees, 2

QUOTATION: The Original Evil

This then is the original evil: man regards himself as his own light, and turns away from that light which would make man himself a light if he would set his heart on it.

--St. Augustine, City of God, 14:13

QUOTATION: The Worldly

Leave the worldly to their world.

--St. Francis de Sales, Letters to Persons in the World, 1:10

QUOTATION: Spiritual Progress

If things always went wrong, no one could endure it; if they always went well, everyone would become arrogant.

--St. Bernard, Letters, 149

QUOTATION: Suffering and Consolations

O you souls who wish to go on with so much safety and consolation, if you knew how pleasing to God is suffering, and how much it helps in acquiring other good things, you would never seek consolation in anything; but you would rather look upon it as a great happiness to bear the Cross of the Lord.

--St. John of the Cross

QUOTATION: Spiritual Warfare

Christians are...born for combat, whereof, the greater the vehemence, the more assuredly, God aiding, the triumph.

--Pope Leo XIII, Sapientiae Christian

QUOTATION: Voting for pro-death candidate always wrong

There is no element of the common good, no morally good practice, which a candidate may promote and to which a voter may be dedicated, which could justify voting for a candidate who also endorses and supports the deliberate killing of the unborn, euthanasia or the recognition of a same-sex relationship as a legal marriage. The respect for the inviolable dignity of innocent human life and for the integrity of marriage and the family are so fundamental to the common good that they cannot be subordinated to any other cause, no matter how good it may be.


-- Archbishop Raymond Burke, The Teachings of the Catholic Church, National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, May 8, 2009

QUOTATION: The Primacy of Peter

Where Peter is, therein must be the Church.

--St. Ambrose