QUOTATION: Angels

By an ancient and divine order, the angels are distributed among the nations.

–St. Clement of Alexandria.

QUOTATION: Difficult People

Don't say, "That person bothers me." Think: "That person sanctifies me."

--St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way

QUOTATION: The Abolition of Religion in the Public Square

[O]nce we ascribe to human reason the only authority to decide what is true and what is good, and the real distinction between good and evil is destroyed; honor and dishonor differ not in their nature, but in the opinion and judgment of each one; pleasure is the measure of what is lawful; and, given a code of morality which can have little or no power to restrain or quiet the unruly propensities of man, a way is naturally opened to universal corruption. With reference also to public affairs: authority is severed from the true and natural principle whence it derives all its efficacy for the common good; and the law determining what it is right to do and avoid doing is at the mercy of a majority. Now, this is simply a road leading straight to tyranny. The empire of God over man and civil society once repudiated, it follows that religion, as a public institution, can have no claim to exist, and that everything that belongs to religion will be treated with complete indifference. Furthermore, with ambitious designs on sovereignty, tumult and sedition will be common amongst the people; and when duty and conscience cease to appeal to them, there will be nothing to hold them back but force, which of itself alone is powerless to keep their covetousness in check. Of this we have almost daily evidence in the conflict with socialists and members of other seditious societies, who labor unceasingly to bring about revolution. It is for those, then, who are capable of forming a just estimate of things to decide whether such doctrines promote that true liberty which alone is worthy of man, or rather, pervert and destroy it.

--Pope Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum, 1888

QUOTATION: Blasphemy Against the Holy Spirit

Blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, then, is the sin committed by the person who claims to have a 'right' to persist in evil - in any sin at all - and who thus rejects Redemption.

--Pope John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantem

QUOTATION: Mary Versus the Devil

Mary is so powerful against the devil that he fears a single breath of hers more than all the prayers of the saints.

--St. Louis de Montfort

QUOTATION: Philosophy and Miracles

Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our senses, something seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted. And our senses are not infallible. If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question.

--C.S. Lewis, Miracles

QUOTATION: Vocations

The garden of the Lord, brethren, includes - yes, it truly includes - includes not only the roses of martyrs but also the lilies of virgins, and the ivy of married people, and the violets of widows. There is absolutely no kind of human beings, my dearly beloved, who need to despair of their vocation; Christ suffered for all. It was very truly written about him: who wishes all men to be saved, and to come to the acknowledgement of the truth.

-- Saint Augustine of Hippo

QUOTATION: Sacrifice

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

--St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way

QUOTATION: Bad Associations

Any society, therefore, which is ruled by and servilely obeys persons who are not steadfast for the right and friendly to religion is capable of being extremely prejudicial to the interests as well of individuals as of the community; beneficial it cannot be. Let this conclusion, therefore, remain firm-to shun not only those associations which have been openly condemned by the judgment of the Church, but those also which, in the opinion of intelligent men, and especially of the bishops, are regarded as suspicious and dangerous.

--Pope Leo XIII, Longinqua

QUOTATION: Our Reward

Remember then how our fathers worked out their salvation; remember the sufferings through which the Church has grown, and the storms the ship of Peter has weathered because it has Christ on board. Remember how the crown was attained by those whose sufferings gave new radiance to their faith. The whole company of saints bears witness to the unfailing truth that without real effort no one wins the crown.

-- St. Thomas Beckett

QUOTATION: Free Will

Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong; I cannot. If a thing is free to be good it is also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having.


--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

QUOTATION: Your Guardian Angel

When tempted, invoke your Angel. He is more eager to help you than you are to be helped! Ignore the devil and do not be afraid of him: He trembles and flees at the sight of your Guardian Angel.

--St. John Bosco

QUOTATION: Mortification

Choose mortifications that don’t mortify others.

--St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way

QUOTATION: Philosophy, Bible Scholarship and the Supernatural

In a popular commentary on the Bible you will find a discussion on the date at which the Fourth Gospel was written. The author says it must have been written after the execution of St. Peter, because, in the Fourth Gospel, Christ is represented as predicting the execution of St. Peter. ‘A book’, thinks the author, ‘cannot be written before events which it refers to’. Of course, it cannot—unless real predictions ever occur. If they do, then this argument for the date is in ruins. And the author has not discussed at all whether real predictions are possible. He takes it for granted (perhaps unconsciously) that they are not. Perhaps he is right: but if he is: but if he is, he has not discovered this principle by historical inquiry. He has brought his disbelief in predictions to his historical work, so to speak, ready made. Unless he had done so his historical conclusion about the date of the Fourth Gospel could not have been reached at all. His work is therefore quite useless to a person who wants to know whether predictions occur. The author gets to work only after he has already answered that question in the negative, and on the grounds which he never communicates to us.

--C.S. Lewis, Miracles

QUOTATION: Bigotry

The people who are the most bigoted are the people who have no convictions at all.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Mortification

Where there is no mortification, there is no virtue.

--St. Josemaria Escriva, The Way

QUOTATION: The Blessed Sacrament

Do you want our Lord to give you many graces? Visit him often. Do you want him to give you few graces? Visit him seldom. Visits to the Blessed Sacrament are powerful and indispensable means of overcoming the attacks of the devil. Make frequent visits to Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and the devil will be powerless against you.

--St. John Bosco

QUOTATION: Liberals and Liberty

If when men discuss the question of liberty they were careful to grasp its true and legitimate meaning, such as reason and reasoning have just explained, they would never venture to affix such a calumny on the Church as to assert that she is the foe of individual and public liberty. But many there are who follow in the footsteps of Lucifer, and adopt as their own his rebellious cry, "I will not serve"; and consequently substitute for true liberty what is sheer and most foolish license. Such, for instance, are the men belonging to that widely spread and powerful organization, who, usurping the name of liberty, style themselves liberals.

--Pope Leo XIII, Libertas Praestantissimum

QUOTATION: Difficult People

When we find ourselves in company with quarrelsome, eccentric individuals, people who openly and unblushingly say the most shocking things, difficult to put up with, we should take refuge in silence, and the wisest plan is not to reply to people whose behaviour is so preposterous.

--St. Ambrose of Milan

QUOTATION: Simplicity

He who has adopted the true life, if he is to abandon luxury as something treacherous, must not only cultivate a simple mode of living, but also a style of speech that is free from verbosity and insincerity.

–St. Clement of Alexandria

QUOTATION: Forgiveness

Forgiveness, in its truest and highest form, is a free act of love; but precisely because it is an act of love, it has its own intrinsic demands: the first of which is respect for the truth.

--Pope John Paul II

QUOTATION: God and Free Will

Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently He thought it worth the risk. Perhaps we feel inclined to disagree with Him. But there is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on.

--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

QUOTATION: Adoption

Although keeping parrots and curlews, the [pagans] do not adopt the orphan child. Rather, they expose children who are born at home. Yet they take up the young of birds.

-–St. Clement of Alexandria

QUOTATION: God's Mysteriousness

A comprehended god is no god.

–- St. John Chrysostom

QUOTATION: The Primacy of Peter

But the Episcopal order is rightly judged to be in communion with Peter, as Christ commanded, if it be subject to and obeys Peter; otherwise it necessarily becomes a lawless and disorderly crowd. It is not sufficient for the due preservation of the unity of the faith that the head should merely have been charged with the office of superintendent, or should have been invested solely with a power of direction. But it is absolutely necessary that he should have received real and sovereign authority which the whole community is bound to obey. What had the Son of God in view when he promised the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven to Peter alone? Biblical usage and the unanimous teaching of the Fathers clearly show that supreme authority is designated in the passage by the word keys. Nor is it lawful to interpret in a different sense what was given to Peter alone, and what was given to the other Apostles conjointly with him. If the power of binding, loosening, and feeding confers upon each and every one of the Bishops the successors of the Apostles a real authority to rule the people committed to him, certainly the same power must have the same effect in his case to whom the duty of feeding the lambs and sheep has been assigned by God. "Christ constituted [Peter] not only pastor, but pastor of pastors; Peter therefore feeds the lambs and feeds the sheep, feeds the children and feeds the mothers, governs the subjects and rules the prelates, because the lambs and the sheep form the whole of the Church" (S. Bruonis Episcopi Signiensis Comment. in Joan., part iii., cap. 21, n. 55). Hence those remarkable expressions of the ancients concerning St. Peter, which most clearly set forth the fact that he was placed n the highest degree of dignity and authority. They frequently call him "the Prince of the College of the Disciples; the Prince of the holy Apostles; the leader of that choir; the mouthpiece of all the Apostles; the head of that family; the ruler of the whole world; the first of the Apostles; the safeguard of the Church." In this sense St. Bernard writes as follows to Pope Eugenius: "Who art thou? The great priest-the high priest. Thou art the Prince of Bishops and the heir of the Apostles.... Thou art he to whom the keys were given. There are, it is true, other gatekeepers of heaven and to pastors of flocks, but thou are so much the more glorious as thou hast inherited a different and more glorious name than all the rest. They have flocks consigned to them, one to each; to thee all the flocks are confided as one flock to one shepherd, and not alone the sheep, but the shepherds. You ask how I prove this? From the words of the Lord. To which - I do not say-of the Bishops, but even of the Apostles have all the sheep been so absolutely and unreservedly committed? If thou lovest me, Peter, feed my sheep. Which sheep? Of this or that country, or kingdom? My sheep, He says: to whom therefore is it not evident that he does not designate some, but all? We can make no exception where no distinction is made" (De Consideratione, lib. ii., cap. 8).

--Pope Leo XIII, Satis Cognitum, On the Unity of the Church, 1896.

QUOTATION: You Can't Argue Against God

God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine. A car is made to run on gasoline, and it would not run properly on anything else. Now God designed the human machine to run on Himself. He Himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn, or the food our spirits were designed to feed on. There is no other. That is why it is just no good asking God to make us happy in our own way without bothering about religion. God cannot give us a happiness and peace apart from Himself, because it is not there. There is no such thing.

--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

QUOTATION: False Tolerance

These are the days when the Christian is expected to praise every creed except his own.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Loving those with whom you argue

Learn to defend your convictions without hating your adversaries and love those who think differently from yourselves.

--Blessed Frederic Ozanam

QUOTATION: Accusations Against the Church

When people impute special vices to the Christian Church, they seem entirely to forget that the world (which is the only other thing there is) has these vices much more. The Church has been cruel; but the world has been much more cruel. The Church has plotted; but the world has plotted much more. The Church has been superstitious; but it has never been so superstitious as the world is when left to itself.

--G.K. Chesterton, All Things Considered

QUOTATION: Reconciliation and Authentic Respect

A correct reading of history will make it easier to accept and appreciate the social, cultural and religious differences between individuals and groups. This is the first step toward reconciliation, since respect for differences is an inherently necessary condition for genuine relationships between individuals and between groups. The suppression of differences can result in apparent peace, but it creates a volatile situation that is, in fact, the prelude to fresh outbreaks of violence.

--Pope John Paul II