QUOTATION: God-Sized Hole

The big, blazing truth about man is that he has a heaven-sized hole in his heart, and nothing else can fill it. We pass our lives trying to fill the Grand Canyon with marbles. As Augustine said: 'Thou hast made us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.'

-- Dr. Peter Kreeft

QUOTATION: Untried

One thing that is not being tried in any particularly enthusiastic way by people who call themselves Catholic is Catholicism. -

- Fr. Benedict Groeschel, The Reform of Renewal

QUOTATION: Knowledge

You need to know your faith. You cannot give what you do not have.

-- Fr. John Corapi

QUOTATION: Human Dignity and Freedom

The value of human dignity, which takes precedence over all political action and all political decision refers to the Creator: only He can establish values that are grounded in the essence of humankind and that are inviolable. The existence of values that cannot be modified by anyone is the true guarantee of our freedom and of human greatness […] .

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, (Pope Benedict XVI), Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Chistianity, Islam, 2004

QUTOATION: Self-Surrender

The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing, is to hand over your whole self--all your wishes and precautions--to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is to remain what we call "ourselves," to keep personal happiness as our great aim in life, and yet at the same time be "good."


-- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

QUOTATION: Standing up for God

Stand your ground like an anvil under the hammer. The mark of a true champion is to stand up to punishment and still come out victorious. It is our duty, particularly when the cause is God's, to accept trials of all kinds, if we ourselves are to be accepted by him.


--St Ignatius of Antioch

QUOTATION: Maternal Love

Mothers of children, even if they have a thousand, carry each and every one fixed in their hearts, and because of the strength of their love they do not forget any of them. In fact, it seems that the more children they have the more their love and care for each one is increased.

-- St. Angela Merici

QUOTATION: Progress

Progress is Providence without God. That is, it is a theory that everything has always perpetually gone right by accident. It is a sort of atheistic optimism, based on an everlasting coincidence far more miraculous than a miracle.


-- G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Faith and Work

Perhaps part of the problem today is that there is a growing cultural demarcation between the sacred and the secular. Increasingly, love and faith are reserved for Church on Sundays, while the workplace demands a focused self-interest and a competitive edge to survive.


--Charlie Douglas, Moral Hazards in the Marketplace

QUOTATION: Church and State

That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it. The same thesis also upsets the order providentially established by God in the world, which demands a harmonious agreement between the two societies. Both of them, the civil and the religious society, although each exercises in its own sphere its authority over them. It follows necessarily that there are many things belonging to them in common in which both societies must have relations with one another. Remove the agreement between Church and State, and the result will be that from these common matters will spring the seeds of disputes which will become acute on both sides; it will become more difficult to see where the truth lies, and great confusion is certain to arise. Finally, this thesis inflicts great injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions touching the rights and the duties of men. Hence the Roman Pontiffs have never ceased, as circumstances required, to refute and condemn the doctrine of the separation of Church and State.

--Pope St. Pius X, Vehementer Nos, 1907

QUOTATION: Forget Yourself

If I say I'm doing well, I'm a proud, self-righteous, arrogant, self-satisfied, priggish Pharisee; if I say I'm doing lousy, I'm a miserable worm with a guilt complex and I need some psychiatry; and if I say I'm sort of fair to midland then I'm dull, wishy-washy, Charlie Brown. So what's the solution? Don't look at yourself. Take your temperature when you're sick, otherwise look at other people and God. They're much more interesting. The first step is to try to forget about yourself altogether. Your real self, your new self, will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come only when you're looking for Him.


--Dr. Peter Kreeft

QUOTATION: Self-Help

God provides the wind. Man must raise the sail.


-- St. Augustine of Hippo

QUOTATION: Marriage

The Christian idea of marriage is based on Christ's words that a man and wife are to be regarded as a single organism - for that is what the words 'one flesh' would be in modern English. And the Christians believe that when He said this He was not expressing a sentiment but stating a fact - just as one is stating a fact when one says that a lock and its key are one mechanism, or that a violin and a bow are one musical instrument.

-- C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

QUOTATION: Tyranny

A despotism may almost be defined as a tired democracy. As fatigue falls on a community, the citizens are less inclined for that eternal vigilance which has truly been called the price of liberty; and they prefer to arm only one single sentinel to watch the city while they sleep.

– G. K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Lying

It is not lawful to tell a lie in order to deliver another from any danger whatever.

--St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

QUOTATION: Self-Reform

We all talk of reforming others without ever reforming ourselves.

--St. Peter of Alcantara

QUOTATION: Friends

If I should have to advise parents, I should tell them to take great care about the people with whom their children associate…Much harm may result from bad company, and we are inclined by nature to follow what is worse than what is better.

-- St. Elizabeth Ann Seton

QUOTATION: Trust in Divine Providence

Cast yourself into the arms of God and be very sure that if He wants anything of you, He will fit you for the work and give you strength.

-- St. Philip Neri

QUOTATION: Trials

God allows us to experience the low points of life in order to teach us lessons that we could learn in no other way.  

-- C.S.  Lewis

QUOTATION: Social Justice

It is too clear that social justice means different things to different people. One essential point that distinguishes the Catholic Church's notion of social justice from its secular counterpart has to do with the concept of personal virtue ... The secular world compartmentalizes the personal and the social, holding that what one does in his personal life -- whether as a private citizen or as the president of a nation -- has little or no relevance to what he does on a social level. The Church understands social justice as a continuity of the personal and the social, the secular world does not ... The Church maintains that, in order to have social justice, we must first have virtuous people. The secular world maintains that social justice does not require virtuous people, only good programs. For the Church, social justice is a personal virtue; for the secular world, it is a political accomplishment. The Church believes that good people make good social programs; the secular world believes that good social programs make good people. Concerning social justice, the Church and the secular world have very little in common.

--Dr. Donald DeMarco

QUOTATION: Prayer

Everything begins with prayer, spending a little time on our knees ... If all the world's rulers and leaders would spend a little time on their knees before God, I believe we would have a better world.

-- Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

QUOTATION: Prayer

The first rule for prayer, the most important first step, is not about how to do it, but to just do it; not to perfect and complete it but to begin it. Once the car is moving, it’s easy to steer it in the right direction, but it’s much harder to start it up when it’s stalled. And prayer is stalled in our world.

--Dr. Peter Kreeft

QUOTATION: Freedom is not Absolute

To claim the right to abortion, infanticide, and euthanasia, and to recognize that right in law, means to attribute to human freedom a perverse and evil significance: that of an absolute power over others and against others. This is the death of true freedom.

-- Pope John Paul II

QUOTATION: The Times

'The times are bad! The times are troublesome!' This is what humans say. But we are our times. Let us live well and our times will be good. Such as we are, such are our times.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Blessed Sacrement

Do you realize that Jesus is there in the tabernacle expressly for you - for you alone? He burns with the desire to come into your heart... The guest of our soul knows our misery; He comes to find an empty tent within us - that is all He asks.

-- St. Therese of Lisieux

QUOTATION: Anxiety

Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith but they are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the passion of Christ.

-- C.S. Lewis

QUOTATION: Silence

Only the silent hear and those who do not remain silent do not hear.

-- Josef Pieper

QUOTATION: Faith

Having a clear faith, based on the creed of the Church, is often labeled today as a fundamentalism. Whereas relativism, which is letting oneself be tossed and ‘swept along by every wind of teaching,’ looks like the only attitude acceptable to today’s standards.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Mary

When you see the storm coming, if you seek safety in that firm refuge which is Mary, there will be no danger of your wavering or going down.


-- St. Josemaria Escriva

QUOTATION: Prayer

I strongly suspect that if we saw all the difference even the tiniest of our prayers to God make, and all the people those little prayers were destined to affect, and all the consequences of those effects down through the centuries, we would be so paralyzed with awe at the power of prayer that we would be unable to get up off our knees for the rest of our lives.

--Peter Kreeft

QUOTATION: Evangelization

For too many of us, Christianity is not a filial relationship with the living God, but a habit and an inheritance. We've become tepid in our beliefs and naive about the world. We've lost our evangelical zeal. And we've failed in passing on our faith to the next generation.

-- Archbishop Charles Chaput

QUOTATION: Who we are

We are not the sum of our weaknesses and failures, we are the sum of the Father's love for us and our real capacity to become the image of His Son Jesus.

--Pope John Paul II