QUOTATION: False Humility

It is a fault, not a virtue, to wish your humility recognized and applauded.

--St. Bernard of Clairvaux

QUOTATION: No Servant is Greater than the Master

We should blush for shame to show so much resentment at what is done or said against us, knowing that so many injuries and affronts have been offered to our Redeemer and the saints.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: Vain Curiosity

Do not disturb yourself with vain curiosity concerning the affairs of others, nor how they conduct themselves, unless your position makes it your duty to do so.

--Venerable Louis de Blois

QUOTATION: Prayer

To give up prayer because we are often distracted at it is to allow the devil to gain his cause.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori

QUOTATION: Good Catholics

Humble submission and obedience to the decrees of the Sovereign Pontiffs are good means for distinguishing the loyal from the rebellious children of the Church.

--St. Vincent de Paul

QUOTATION: The Mysterious Depths of Christ

Though holy doctors have uncovered many mysteries and wonders, and devout souls have understood them in this earthly condition of ours, yet the greater part still remains to be unfolded by them, and even to be understood by them.

We must then dig deeply in Christ. He is like a rich mine with many pockets containing treasures: however deep we dig, we will never find their end or their limit. Indeed, in every pocket new seams of fresh riches are discovered on all sides.

For this reason the apostle Paul said of Christ, "In him are hidden all the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge of God." The soul cannot enter into these treasures, nor attain them, unless it first crosses into and enters the thicket of suffering, enduring interior and exterior labors, and unless it first receives from God very many blessings in the intellect and in the senses, and has undergone long spiritual training.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Prayer

The person who thinks only of himself says only prayers of petition; the one who thinks of his neighbor says prayers of intercession; whoever thinks only of loving and serving God says prayers of abandonment to God's will, and this is the prayer of the saints.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Self-Denial

It is well to deny ourselves that which is permitted, in order to avoid more easily that which is not.

--St. Benedict of Nursia

QUOTATION: Humility

As patience leads to peace, and study to science, so are humiliations the path that leads to humility.

--St. Bernard of Clairvaux

QUOTATION: Self-Worth

There is nothing more unreasonable than to estimate our worth by the opinion of others. Today they laud us to the skies, to-morrow they will cover us with ignominy.

--Louis of Granada

QUOTATION: Judgement at the Hour of Death

It will be a great consolation for us at the hour of death to know that we are to be judged by Him whom we have loved above all things during life.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: Suffering

God's way in dealing with those whom He intends to admit soonest after this life into the possession of His everlasting glory, is to purify them in this world by the greatest afflictions and trials.

--St. Ignatius Loyola

QUOTATION: Atheism

Where doubt over God becomes prevalent, then doubt over humanity follows inevitably.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Resignation

When we receive with an entire and perfect resignation the afflictions which God sends us they become for us favors and benefits; because conformity to the will of God is a gain far superior to all temporal advantages.

--St. Vincent de Paul

QUOTATION: Animals

If you have men who will exclude any of God's creatures from the shelter of compassion and pity, you will have men who will deal likewise with their fellow men.

-- St. Francis of Assisi

QUOTATION: Divided Loyalties

What a sad life does he lead who wants both to please the world and to serve God! Apart from the fact that you are going to be unhappy all the time, you can never attain the stage at which you will be able to please the world and please God.

--St. Jean Vianney, the Cure of Ars

QUOTATION: Abortion in America

America needs no words from me to see how your decision in Roe v. Wade has deformed a great nation. The so-called right to abortion has pitted mothers against their children and women against men. It has sown violence and discord at the heart of the most intimate human relationships. It has aggravated the derogation of the father’s role in an increasingly fatherless society. It has portrayed the greatest of gifts - a child - as a competitor, an intrusion, and an inconvenience. It has nominally accorded mothers unfettered dominion over the independent lives of their physically dependent sons and daughters.

--Blessed Mother Teresa of Calcutta

QUOTATION: The Reformation

As a highly Pagan poet said to me: "The Reformation happened because people hadn't the brains to understand Aquinas."

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Church and State

A religion that doesn't interfere with the secular order will soon discover that the secular order will not refrain from interfering with it.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Suffering in Purgatory

The greatest pain which the holy souls suffer in purgatory proceeds from their desire to possess God. This suffering especially afflicts those who in life had but a feeble desire of heaven.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori

QUOTATION: Suffering

If it was necessary that Christ should suffer and so enter by the cross into the kingdom of His Father, no friend of God should shrink from suffering.

--Venerable John Tauler

QUOTATION: The Ascension

In raising human nature to heaven by His ascension, Christ has given us the hope of arriving there ourselves.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Pride

If we secretly feel a desire to appear greater or better than others, we must repress it at once.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: Suffering

In proportion as the love of God increases in our soul, so does also the love of suffering.

--St. Vincent de Paul

QUOTATION: Church Authority vs. Private Judgement

When you have contrived to persuade him that, for Catholics, the authority of the Church in matters of faith is not a self-evident axiom, but a truth arrived at by a process of argument, the Protestant controversialist has his retort ready. "You admit, then, after all," he says, "that a man has to use his own private judgment in order to arrive at religious truth? Why, then, what is the use of authority in religion at all? I had always supposed that there was a straight issue between us, you supporting authority and I private judgment; I had always supposed that you criticised me for my presumption in searching for God by the light of my imperfect human reason; it proves, now, that you are no less guilty of such presumption than myself! Surely your reproaches are inconsistent, and your distinctions unnecessary. If you use your private judgment to establish certain cardinal points of theology, the existence of God, the authority of Christ, and so on, why may not I use my private judgment to establish not only these, but all other points of theology--questions such as the doctrine of the Blessed Trinity, or the Real Presence in the Eucharist? You can hardly blame me for using the very privileges which you have just claimed so eagerly for yourself."

I could not have imagined, if I had not heard it with my own ears, the accent of surprise with which Protestants suddenly light upon this startling discovery, that the belief we Catholics have in authority is based upon an act of private judgment. How on earth could they ever suppose we taught otherwise? I say nothing here of the grace of faith, which is the hidden work of God in our souls. But how could the conscious process by which we arrive at any form of the truth begin without an act of private judgment? I may, indeed, overcome by a kind of emotional crisis, surrender myself unreflectively to an influence imaginatively experienced; but that is not Catholicism, it is Protestantism; it is "conversion" in its crudest form. If I employ my reason at all; if I employ my reason only so far as to say "The Church says this, and the Church is infallible, therefore this must be true," even so I am using private judgment; it is my own reason which draws its conclusions from the syllogism. Reject private judgment? Of course Catholics have never rejected private judgment; they only profess to delimit the spheres in which private judgment and authority have their respective parts to play.

Is it really so difficult to see that a revealed religion demands, from its very nature, a place for private judgment and a place for authority? A place for private judgment, in determining that the revelation itself comes from God, in discovering the Medium through which that revelation comes to us, and the rule of faith by which we are enabled to determine what is, and what is not, revealed. A place for authority to step in, when these preliminary investigations are over, and say "Now, be careful, for you are out of your depth here. How many Persons subsist in the Unity of the Divine Nature, what value and what power underlies the mystery of sacramental worship, how Divine Grace acts upon the human will--these and a hundred other questions are questions which your human reason cannot investigate for itself, and upon which it can pronounce no sentence, since it moves in the natural not in the supernatural order. At this point, then, you must begin to believe by hearsay; from this point onwards you must ask, not to be convinced, but to be taught." Is it really so illogical in us, to fix the point at which our private judgment is no longer of any service? Are we really more inconsistent than the bather who steps out cautiously through the shallow water and then, when it is breast-high, spreads out his hands to swim?

--Msgr Ronald Knox, The Belief of Catholics, 1927

QUOTATION: Democracy

The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.

--G.K. Chesterton ‘What I Saw in America.’

QUOTATION: Spiritual Reading

In reading holy books we receive many lights and divine calls. St. Jerome says that when we pray we speak to God; but when we read, God speaks to us. St. Ambrose says the same: "We address him when we pray; we hear him when we read." In prayer, God hears our petitions, but in reading we listen to his voice. We cannot, as I have already said, always have at hand a spiritual Father, nor can we hear the sermons of sacred orators, to direct and give us light to walk well in the way of God. Good books supply the place of sermons. St. Augustine writes that good books are, as it were, so many letters of love the Lord sends us; in them he warns us of our dangers, teaches us the way of salvation, animates us to suffer adversity, enlightens us, and inflames us with divine love. Whoever, then, desires to be saved and to acquire divine love, should often read these letters of paradise.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The True Spouse of Jesus Christ

QUOTATION: Suffering

We complain when we suffer. We have much more reason to complain when we do not suffer, since nothing so likens us to Our Lord as the bearing of His Cross.

--St. Jean Vianney, The Cure of Ars

QUOTATION: Conversation with Jesus

You seek the company of friends who, with their conversation and affection, with their friendship, make the exile of this world more bearable for you. There is nothing wrong with that, although friends sometimes let you down.

But how is it you don't frequent daily with greater intensity the company, the conversation, of the great Friend, who never lets you down?

--Josemaria Escriva, The Way, 88

QUOTATION: Christ and the Cross

The cross without Christ is the concentration camp, the police state and slavery. Christ without the cross is effeminacy, degeneration, LSD and mysticism which settles for pharmaceuticals instead of sacrifice.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Self-Sacrifice

You propose to give up everything to God; be sure, then, to include yourself among the things to be given up.

--St. Benedict of Nursia

QUOTATION: Service

I have been all things unholy. If God can work through me, he can work through anyone.

--St. Francis of Assisi

QUOTATION: Bearing Wrong

To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Dissent

As individuals, we can claim to believe whatever we want. We can posture, and rationalize our choices, and make alibis with each other all day long — but no excuse for our lack of honesty and zeal will work with the God who made us. God knows our hearts better than we do. If we don’t conform our hearts and actions to the faith we claim to believe, we’re only fooling ourselves.

--Archbishop Charles Chaput

QUOTATION: Freedom of Religion and Education

It is the great paradox of the modern world that at the very time when the world decided that people should not be coerced about their form of religion, it also decided that they should be coerced about their form of education.

--G.K. Chesterton