QUOTATION: The Righteous Man

Nothing distinguishes the unrighteous from the righteous more than this: that in affliction, the unrighteous man impatiently complains and blasphemes. In contrast, the righteous man is proved by his patience.

--St. Cyprian of Carthage

QUOTATION: Charity

The spiritual man certainly relieves the afflicted person, helping him with consolations, encouragements, and the necessities of life. He gives to all who need. Yet he does not give equally, but justly—according to dessert. Furthermore, he even gives to him who persecutes and hates.

--St. Clement of Alexandria.

QUOTATION: Christophobia

There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Angels

God sets many angels in our paths but often we know them not; in fact we may go through life never knowing that they were agents or messengers of God to lead us in to virtue or to deter us from vice. But they symbolize that constant and benign intervention of God in human history, which stops us on the path to destruction or leads us to success or happiness.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Now is the Time to Preach the Gospel

Now more than ever, in a world that is often without light and without the courage of noble ideals, people need the fresh vital spirituality of the gospel. Do not be afraid to go out on the streets and into public places, like the first apostles who preached Christ and the good news of salvation in the squares of cities, towns, and villages. This is no time to be ashamed of the gospel. It is the time to preach it from the rooftops. Do not be afraid to break out of comfortable and routine modes of living in order to take up the challenge of making Christ known in the modern metropolis. It is you who must “go out into the roads and lanes” and invite everyone you meet to the banquet that God has prepared for His people.

--Pope John Paul II

QUOTATION: The Struggle for Freedom

The struggle for freedom, then, is waged not alone by the athletes of battles in wars. Rather, it is also waged in banquets, in bed, and in the tribunals by those who are anointed by the Word—who are ashamed to become captives of pleasure.

--St. Clement of Alexandria.

QUOTATION: Love

Love means loving the unlovable - or it is no virtue at all.

--G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

QUOTATION: The Dictatorship of Relativism

A dictatorship of relativism is being constituted that recognizes nothing as absolute and which only leaves the ‘I’ and its whims as the ultimate measure. Relativism, that is, allowing oneself to be carried about with every wind of ‘doctrine,’ seems to be the only attitude that is fashionable.

-- Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: We are Creatures of Belief

There are in the lives of human beings many more truths that are simply believed than truths that are acquired by way of personal verification. Who, for instance, could assess critically the countless scientific findings upon which modern life is based? Who could personally examine the flow of information that comes day after day from all parts of the world and that is generally accepted as true? Who in the end could forge anew that paths of experience and thought that have yielded the treasures of human wisdom and religion? This means that the human being—the one who seeks truth—is also one who lives by belief.

--Pope John Paul II

QUOTATION: Impartiality

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Conditional Faith Produces Conditional Catholics

Maybe people are led to think, the Church will change its position on this or that or the other thing. The "maybes" of conditionality produce conditional Catholics, and conditional Catholics are deprived of the joy of unqualified discipleship.

--Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, 'To Propose The Truth'

QUOTATION: Teasing

Let us keep from ribbing others. For this is the originator of insults. Strife, contention, and enmities burst forth from insults. As I have said, insult is the servant of drunkenness. So man is not judged by his deeds alone, but also by his words.

--St. Clement of Alexandria.

QUOTATION: Jesus

Examine more fully the life history of such an individual [i.e. Jesus]….He was brought up in frugality and poverty. He did not receive a complete education. He had not studied systems and opinions…. How could such a person…have been able to teach in a manner not at all to be despised….so that not only the rustic and the ignorant persons were won by His words, but also many of those who were distinguished by their wisdom?... Now, would not anyone who investigated with ordinary care the nature of these facts be struck with amazement at this man’s victory? … This man, in addition to His other merits, is an objection of admiration for His wisdom, His miracles, and His power of government.

–Origen.

QUOTATION: Being Counter-Cultural

Whether "in season or out of season," those who propose Christian truth must always cultivate the courage to be counter-cultural. Until Our Lord returns in glory, we will be wrestling with what it means to be in the world but not of the world.

--Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, 'To Propose The Truth'

QUOTATION: Our Personal Disposition

One does not have to be gloomy, only serious. For I certainly prefer a man to smile who has a stern countenance, rather than the reverse...But even smiling must be disciplined. For we should not smile at what is disgraceful. Rather, we should blush, lest we seem to take pleasure in it by sympathy.

--St. Clement of Alexandria.

QUOTATION: Faith and Certainty

Faith has two peculiarities;--it is most certain, decided, positive, immovable in its assent, and it gives this assent not because it sees with the eye, or sees with the reason, but because it receives the tidings from one who comes from God.

--Cardinal Newman, Faith and Private Judgment

QUOTATION: The Sense of Sin

The sin of the century is the loss of the sense of sin.

--Bl. Pope Pius XII.

QUOTATION: Faith Rests on God's Authority

He who believes that God is true, and that this is His word, which he has committed to man, has no doubt at all. He is as certain that the doctrine taught is true, as that God is true; and he is certain, because God is true, because God has spoken, not because he sees its truth or can prove its truth.

--Cardinal John Henry Newman, Faith and Private Judgment

QUOTATION: God's Mercy

If the greatest sinner on earth should repent at the moment of death, and draw his last breath in an act of love; neither the many graces he had abused, nor the many sins he had committed would stand in his way. Our Lord would receive him into His mercy.

--St. Therese de Lisieux

QUOTATION: Suffering

If there be a true way that leads to the Everlasting Kingdom, it is most certainly that of suffering, patiently endured.

--St. Colette

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: Mortal Sin and Communion

It must be remembered that the Church, guided by faith in this great Sacrament, teaches that no Christian who is conscious of grave sin can receive the Eucharist before having obtained God's forgiveness.

--Pope John Paul II, Reconciliatio et Paenitentia

QUOTATION: Real Love

What a weakness it is to love Jesus Christ only when He caresses us, and to be cold immediately once He afflicts us. This is not true love. Those who love thus, love themselves too much to love God with all their heart.

--St. Margaret Mary Alcoque

QUOTATION: The Will of God

The first end I propose in our daily work is to do the will of God; secondly, to do it in the manner he wills it; and thirdly to do it because it is his will.

--St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

QUOTATION: Angels

So great is the delight which the angels take in executing the will of God, that if it were His will that one of them should come upon earth to pull up weeds and root out nettles from a field, he would leave Paradise immediately and set himself to work with all his heart, and with infinite pleasure.

--Bl. Henry Suso

QUOTATION: The Restoration of the Sense of Sin

The restoration of a proper sense of sin is the first way of facing the grave spiritual crisis looming over man today. But the sense of sin can only be restored through a clear reminder of the unchangeable principles of reason and faith which the moral teaching of the Church has always upheld.

--Pope John Paul II, Reconciliatio et Paenitentia

QUOTATION: Love of God

The love of God is acquired by resolving to labor and suffer for Him, and to abstain from all that displeases Him, and by putting this resolution into practice as occasion arises. But to be able to do it well in great things, it is necessary to attend to it in small.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: Conscience and the Sense of Sin

When the conscience is weakened the sense of God is also obscured, and as a result, with the loss of this decisive inner point of reference, the sense of sin is lost.

--Pope John Paul II, Reconciliatio et Paenitentia

QUOTATION: Danger

When we find ourselves in any danger, even a grave one, we ought not to lose courage, but to trust much in the Lord; for where the peril is greater, there also is greater aid from Him who chooses to be called the helper in dangers and tribulations.

--St. Ambrose

QUOTATION: Faith and Virtue

We are firmly convinced that the truths of faith cannot deceive us, and yet we cannot bring ourselves to trust to them; nay, we are far more ready to trust to human reasonings and the deceitful appearance of this world. This, then, is the cause of our slight progress in virtue, and of our small success in what concerns the glory of God.

--St. Vincent de Paul