QUOTATION: Graces

God is more anxious to bestow His blessings on us than we are to receive them.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Communion

One of the most admirable effects of holy communion is to preserve the soul from sin, and to help those who fall through weakness to rise again. It is much more profitable, then, to approach this divine Sacrament with love, respect, and confidence, than to remain away through an excess of fear and scrupulosity.

--St. Ignatius Loyola

QUOTATION: Perfection

First, I do not here pretend to deny but that we are to rejoice when God approaches us, and be sorry when he withdraws himself from us. For it is impossible a soul should not feel a sensible joy in the presence of her beloved, and be sensibly afflicted at his absence, since by this she is left to desolations and temptations. Jesus Christ himself was sensibly affected on seeing himself forsaken by his eternal father, when on the cross he cried out: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ? (Matthew 27:46). But what I desire is, that we make our profit of this hard proof and trial which God sometimes sends his elect; and that we endeavor to fortify our souls, in conforming ourselves to the divine will, saying: Nevertheless, O Lord, not as I will, but as you will. (Matthew 26:39).

We must make use of this means the more readily, as Christian perfection consists neither in the sweetness of consolations, nor in sublime prayer; and as our advancement is not measured thereby, but only according to the rule of charity, which is independent of all other things, and which consists in a perfect union and submission to the Divine Will, as well in adversity and desolation, as in prosperity and comfort. Wherefore upon this account it is, that spiritual crosses and aridities ought to be received from the hand of God, as well as consolations and favors: and we must thank him equally for both. If it be your pleasure, O Lord, that I remain in darkness, blessed be your holy name; if you will have me enjoy the light, blessed be your holy name; if you confer comforts upon me, blessed be your holy name; and if you will have me suffer afflictions, blessed be your holy name. This is the advice of the apostle when writing to the Thessalonians, he says: In all this give God thanks; for this is what God would have all do in Jesus Christ. (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

--St. Alphonsus Rodriguez

QUOTATION: Patience

He who suffers in patience, suffers less and saves his soul. He who suffers impatiently, suffers more and loses his soul.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori

QUOTATION: Pain

Pain in itself is not unbearable; it is the failure to understand its meaning that is unbearable.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Prayer

Great talent is a gift of God, but it is a gift which is by no means necessary in order to pray well. This gift is required in order to converse well with men; but it is not necessary in order to speak well with God. To speak well with God, one needs good desires and nothing more.

--St. John of the Cross

QUOTATION: Disturbed Prayer

When through frailty a Christian is disturbed in prayer let him not imagine his entreaties to be worthless; for the benignity of God is such that, provided the petitioner's virtual intention be good, his prayer is not rejected.

--Venerable Louis de Blois

QUOTATION: Prayer

Aspire to God with short but frequent outpourings of the heart; admire His bounty; invoke His aid; cast yourself in spirit at the foot of His cross; adore His goodness; treat with Him of your salvation; give Him your whole soul a thousand times in the day; fix your interior eyes on His ineffable sweetness; stretch forth your hand toward Him as an infant toward its father to be conducted by Him.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Graces

How should Our Lord fail to grant His graces to him who asks for them from his heart, when He confers so many blessings even on those who do not call upon Him? Ah, He would not so urge, and almost force us to pray to Him, if He had not a most eager desire to bestow His graces on us.

--St. John Chrysostom

QUOTATION: Prayer

However great may be the temptation, if we know how to use the weapon of prayer well, we shall come off conquerors at last; for prayer is more powerful than all the devils. He who is attacked by the spirits of darkness needs only to apply himself vigorously to prayer, and he will beat them back with great success.

--St. Bernard of Clairvaux

QUOTATION: Suffering

There is no human life without suffering, and he who is incapable of accepting suffering is refusing himself the purifications that alone allow us to reach maturity.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Spiritual Perfection

Rushrochius a man very learned, and excellently well versed in spirituality, relates that a holy virgin, explaining to her director, who was a great servant of God, the method she used in prayer, told him, she was accustomed to make her meditation upon the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ: and the fruit she reaped thence, was to have a knowledge of herself, of her own faults, and her vicious inclinations; and above all to have a great compassion and sorrow for the sufferings of the Son of God. The director answered her, what she said was very good, but that any one might without attaining any great perfection, be extremely touched with the sufferings of Jesus Christ, even as amongst men, the very sentiments of nature make them feel for the afflictions and calamities of their neighbour. But, the holy virgin, who desired to know the opinion of her confessor, thereby to regulate her way of proceeding, demanded, if a continual lamenting her sins, were not a profitable devotion? Yes, my daughter, replied the confessor: but still that is not what is the most perfect; because naturally what is evil in itself, causes in us dissatisfaction and regret. Would it then be, answered she, a perfect devotion to exercise ourselves in meditating on the pains of the damned, and the glory of the blessed? Nor is that, replied he, what is the most sublime in perfection. For nature itself abhors all that causes it any grief or pain, and is always inclined to what affords it joy and content. At last seeing she could get no other answer from her director, she departed in tears and very much troubled, that she could not understand, to what she should more particularly apply herself in her meditations, to render them more acceptable to God.

Awhile after, as she was still in the same affliction, there appeared to her a young child, of surprising beauty, to whom, after she had discovered the cause of her affliction, and that she could find no one capable of giving her any comfort — not so, said the child: for I both can and will comfort you. Go seek your spiritual father, and tell him that true and real devotion consists in an entire renunciation of one's self, and an absolute resignation into the hands of God, by a strict union with him in love, and a perfect conformity in all things to his divine will. The holy woman, abundantly satisfied with this, told it her director; who answered, that that very thing in reality was the essential point, to which she ought most particularly to apply herself in meditation. Because in this consists true charity, and love of God, and consequently all our advancement and perfection.

--St. Alphonsus Rodriguez

QUOTATION: Slander

To the extent that you pray with all your soul for the person who slanders you, God will make the truth known to those who have been scandalized by the slander.

--St. Maximus the Confessor

QUOTATION: Humility

If humble souls are contradicted, they remain calm; if they are calumniated, they suffer with patience; if they are little esteemed, neglected, or forgotten, they consider that their due; if they are weighed down with occupations, they perform them cheerfully.

--St. Vincent de Paul

QUOTATION: Temptation

When the devil again tempts you to sin, telling you that God is merciful, remember that the Lord shows mercy to them that fear Him, but not to them who despise Him.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori

QUOTATION: Worldly vs. Spiritual Joy

Here is the difference between the joys of the world and the cross of Jesus Christ: after having tasted the first, one is disgusted with them; and on the contrary, the more one partakes of the cross, the greater the thirst for it.

--St. Ignatius Loyola

QUOTATIONS: Virtue

Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue.

--Blessed John Henry Newman

QUOTATION: Economics

The basic problem of the economic world is a spiritual one. Tell me what you believe about a man and I will tell you your economics.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Obedience

I often thought my constitution would never endure the work I had to do, (but) the Lord said to me: ‘Daughter, obedience gives strength.’

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: Impurity

When you have sought the company of a sensual satisfaction, what loneliness afterward!

--St. Josemaria Escriva

QUOTATION: God is the fundamental question

But the question of the interior life is being more sharply raised today than in several periods less troubled than ours. The explanation of this interest lies in the fact that many men have separated themselves from God and tried to organize intellectual and social life without Him. The great problems that have always preoccupied humanity have taken on a new and sometimes tragic aspect. To wish to get along without God, first Cause and last End, leads to an abyss; not only to nothingness, but also to physical and moral wretchedness that is worse than noth­ingness. Likewise, great problems grow exasperatingly serious, and man must finally perceive that all these problems ultimately lead to the fundamental religious problem; in other words, he will finally have to declare himself entirely for God or against Him. This is in its essence the problem of the interior life. Christ Himself says: "He that is not with Me is against Me." (5)

--Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, O.P.

QUOTATION: Forgiveness

Be assured that one great means to find favor when we appear before God is to have pardoned the injuries we have received here below.

--Louis de Granada

QUOTATION: Lukewarm Souls

The reason why the lukewarm run so great a risk of being lost is because tepidity conceals from the soul the immense evil which it causes.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori

QUOTATION: Resignation to the Divine Will

A single act of resignation to the divine will in what it ordains contrary to our desires, is of more value than a hundred thousand successes conformable to our will and taste.

--St. Vincent de Paul

QUOTATION: Love and Suffering

Even suffering is part of the truth of our life. Thus, trying to shield the youngest from every difficulty and experience of suffering, we risk creating, despite our good intentions, fragile persons of little generosity: The capacity to love, in fact, corresponds to the capacity to suffer, and to suffer together.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Courage

Courage does not consist in calculation, but in fighting against chances.

--Blessed John Henry Newman

QUOTATION: Why Do the Wicked Prosper?

Perhaps you say, Why are the wicked joyous? Why do they live in luxury? Why do they not toil with me? It is because they who have not put down their names to strive for the crown are not bound to undergo the labors of the contest. They who have not gone down into the race-course do not annoint themselves with oil nor get covered with dust. For those whom glory awaits trouble is at hand. The perfumed spectators are wont to look on, not to join in the struggle, nor to endure the sun, the heat, the dust, and the showers.

--St. Ambrose of Milan

QUOTATION: The Sorrows of the Blessed Mother

Mary's sorrow was less when she saw her only Son crucified, than it is now at the sight of men offending Him by sin.

--St. Ignatius Loyola

QUOTATION: Divine Providence

Live always in the certainty that whatever happens to you is the result of divine Providence; because nothing hard or laborious falls to your lot without the Lord permitting it.

--Venerable Louis de Blois

QUOTATION: Perseverance

We must be careful not to omit our prayers, confession, communion, and other exercises of piety, even when we find no consolation in them.

--St. Vincent Ferrer

QUOTATION: Mother of God

Just suppose that you could have pre-existed your own mother, in much the same way that an artist pre-exists his painting. Furthermore, suppose that you had an infinite power to make your mother anything that you pleased, just as a great artist like Raphael has the power of realizing his artistic ideals. Suppose you had this double power, what kind of mother would you have made for yourself? Would you have made her of such a type that would make you blush because of her unwomanly and unmotherlike actions? Would you have in any way stained and soiled her with the selfishness that would make her unattractive not only to you, but to your fellow-man? Would you have made her exteriorly and interiorly of such a character as to make you ashamed of her, or would you have made her, so far as human beauty goes, the most beautiful woman in the world; and so far as beauty of the soul goes, one who would radiate every virtue, every manner of kindness and charity and loveliness; one who by the purity of her life and her mind and her heart would be an inspiration not only to you, but even to your fellow-men, so that all would look up to her as the very incarnation of what is best in motherhood?

Now if you who are an imperfect being and who have not the most delicate conception of all that is fine in life would have wished for the loveliest of mothers, do you think that our Blessed Lord, who not only pre-existed His own mother but who had an infinite power to make her just what He chose, would in virtue of all the infinite delicacy of His spirit make her any less pure and loving and beautiful than you would have made your own mother? If you who hate selfishness would have made her selfless and you who hate ugliness would have made her beautiful, do you not think that the Son of God, who hates sin, would have made His own mother sinless and He who hates moral ugliness would have made her immaculately beautiful?

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen