QUOTATION: Celibacy

The Church asks her priests and nuns to surrender even the lawful pleasures of the flesh, not because she does not want them to love, but because she wants them to love better.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, The Seven Capital Sins

QUOTATION: False Humility

If, when stung by slander or ill-nature, we wax proud and swell with anger, it is a proof that our gentleness and humility are unreal, and mere artificial show.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Anger

It is better not to allow anger, however just and reasonable, to enter at all, than to admit it in ever so slight a degree; once admitted, it will not be easily expelled, for, though at first but a small plant, it will immediately grow into a large tree.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Sharp Words

Take pains to refrain from sharp words. Pardon one another so that later on you will not remember the injury. The recollection of an injury is itself wrong. It adds to our anger, nurtures our sins and hates what is good. It is a rusty arrow and poison for the soul. It puts all virtue to flight.

--St. Francis of Paola

QUOTATION: Prayer

Virtues are formed by prayer. Prayer preserves temperance. Prayer suppresses anger. Prayer prevents emotions of pride and envy. Prayer draws into the soul the Holy Spirit, and raises man to Heaven.

--St. Ephraim of Syria

QUOTATION: The State of Grace

The greatest security we can have in this world that we are in the grace of God, does not consist in the feelings that we have of love to Him, but rather in an irrevocable abandonment of our whole being into His hands, and in a firm resolution never to consent to any sin great or small.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: To Love Jesus

If you really want to love Jesus, first learn to suffer, because suffering teaches you to love.

--St. Gemma Galgani

QUOTATION: Conscience

In support of the claim that Newman's concept of conscience matched the modern subjective understanding, people often quote a letter in which he said — should he have to propose a toast — that he would drink first to conscience and then to the Pope. But in this statement, "conscience" does not signify the ultimately binding quality of subjective intuition. It is an expression of the accessibility and the binding force of truth: on this its primacy is based. The second toast can be addressed to the Pope because it is his task to demand obedience to the truth.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Loss of Souls

A multitude of souls fall into the depths of Hell, and it is of the faith that all who die in mortal sin are condemned for ever and ever. According to statistics, approximately 80,000 persons die every day. How many of these will die in mortal sin, and how many will be condemned! For, as their lives have been, so also will be their end.

--St. Anthony Mary Claret

QUOTATION: The Consequences of Sin

Anyone is free to deny morality, but he is not free to escape the effects of its violation. Sin is written on faces, in the brain, it is seen in the shifting eyes and the hidden fears of night.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: The Blessed Virgin Mary and Purgatory

The clients of this most merciful Mother are very fortunate. She helps them both in this life and in the next, consoling them and sponsoring their cause in Purgatory. For the simple reason that the Souls in Purgatory need help so desperately, since they cannot help themselves, our Mother of Mercy does so much more to relieve them. She exercises over these Poor Souls, who are the spouses of Christ, particular dominion, with power to relieve them and even deliver them from their pains. See how important it is then to have devotion to this good Lady, because she never forgets her servants as long as they suffer in these flames. If she helps all the Poor Souls, she is especially indulgent and consoling to her own clients.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Glories of Mary

QUOTATION: A Sinner's Odds

Out of one hundred thousand sinners who continue in sin until death, scarcely one will be saved.

--St. Jerome

QUOTATION: Resignation to God's Will

Cæsarius relates that in a certain monastery there was a Religious, upon whom God had so abundantly conferred the gift of miracles, that he cured the sick by the very touch of his habit or girdle. The abbot of the monastery taking notice of it, and not discerning any particular mark of sanctity in the Religious, took him aside, and forced him to discover whence it came, that God worked so many miracles by his means. I cannot conceive the reason, answered the Religious; for I do not fast more than others; I practice no more austerities and penances, than others; I neither work nor watch, nor do I spend more time in prayer and meditation than others do. All in reality I can say of myself is, that I am neither puffed up with prosperity, nor dejected with adversity; so that whatsoever happens, I am never discomposed, or troubled in mind; and in all the misfortunes which are annexed to this life, whether they fall upon me in particular, or my brethren in general, I always, notwithstanding, retain equal temper and peace of mind, as before. But were you not somewhat concerned, replied the abbot, when the enemy put fire to our farm and burnt it down? Not in the least, said the Religious; I was not at all troubled thereat: because I have long since resigned all things into the hands of God: and so, let whatever happen, whether good or bad, great or small, I receive them with equal thanksgiving, as coming from the hand of the Almighty. By this, the abbot clearly understood that doubtless this resignation was the cause of the many miracles which God wrought by this holy man. (Op. Cit. Volume I of III, The Eighth Treatise - Of Conformity to the Will of God).

--St. Alphonsus Rodriguez

QUOTATION: Resignation to God's Will

Let us throw ourselves into the arms of God, and be sure that if He wishes to accomplish anything by us, He will qualify us for all He desires us to do for Him. When the soul lies resignedly in the hands of God, and is contented with the Divine pleasure, she is in good hands, and has the best security that good will happen to her. Entire conformity and resignation to the Divine will is truly a road on which we cannot go wrong, and it is the only road which leads us to taste and enjoy that peace which sensual and earthly men know nothing of.

--St. Philip Neri

QUOTATION: Pleasure

Enjoy yourself as much as you like – if only you keep from sin.

--St. John Bosco

QUOTATION: Prayer

To pray is to raise the mind to God and converse with Him concerning our interests with a reverent familiarity, and a confidence greater than has the most petted child with its mother, and to talk with Him of all things both high and low, of the things of Heaven and the things of earth; it is to open one's heart to Him and pour it out unreservedly to Him; it is to tell Him of our labors, our sins, our desires, and all that is in our soul, and to find our rest with Him as we would with a friend. It is what the Holy Scripture calls "pouring forth one's heart as water before Him."

-- St. Francis of Sales

QUOTATION: Contraception

The root principle of birth-control is unsound. It is a glorification of the means and a contempt of the end; it says that the pleasure which is a means to the procreation of children is good, but the children themselves are no good. In other words, to be logical, the philosophy of birth-control would commit us to a world in which trees were always blooming but never giving fruit, a world full of sign-posts that were leading nowhere. In this cosmos every tree would be a barren fig-tree and for that reason would have upon it the curse of God.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Prayer

We do not know the number of souls that is ours to save through our prayers and sacrifices; therefore, let us always pray for sinners.

--St. Faustina, Divine Mercy in my Soul

QUOTATION: Mortal Sin

We should all realize that no matter where or how a man dies, if he is in the state of mortal sin and does not repent, when he could have done so and did not, the Devil tears his soul from his body with such anguish and distress that only a person who has experienced it can appreciate it.

--St. Francis of Assisi

QUOTATION: God's Will

God gives each one of us sufficient grace ever to know His holy will, and to do it fully.

--St. Ignatius Loyola

QUOTATION: God's Mercy

A sinner cannot outrage the Deity more than by despairing of Divine mercy on account of the number and enormity of his crimes; for God's clemency is far greater than the iniquity and guilt of an entire world . . . Of God's mercy never despair.

--Venerable Louis de Blois

QUOTATION: Doctrine

To put into practice the teachings of our holy faith, it is not enough to convince ourselves that they are true; we must love them. Love united to faith makes us practise our religion.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori

QUOTATION: Mary Our Mother

When Christians of all times and places turn to Mary, they are acting on the spontaneous conviction that Jesus cannot refuse his mother what she asks; and they are relying on the unshakable trust that Mary is also our mother.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Contradicting

In order to avoid contention, never contradict anyone, except in case of sin or some danger to a neighbor; and when necessary to contradict others, and to oppose your opinion to theirs, do it with so much mildness and tact, as not to appear to do violence to their mind, for nothing is ever gained by taking up things with excessive warmth and hastiness.

--St. Louis of France

QUOTATION: Confession

In failing to confess, Lord, I would only hide You from myself, not myself from You.

--Saint Augustine

QUOTATION: Persistence

The greater and more persistent your confidence in God, the more abundantly you will receive all that you ask.

--St. Albert the Great

QUOTATION: Love of God

As those who are influenced by human and natural love have their minds and hearts constantly fixed on the objects of their affections; as they speak often in their praise, and when absent lose no opportunity of expressing by letters this affection for them, and cannot even pass a tree without inscribing on the bark the name of their beloved: so those who are possessed of Divine love have their minds and hearts constantly turned toward the Divine object of their love; they are ever thinking of Him, they long after Him; they aspire to Him, and frequently speak of Him; and, were it possible, would engrave in the hearts of all mankind the Name of their beloved Jesus.

--St. Francis of Sales

QUOTATION: Daily Prayer

It is an old custom with the servants of God to have some little prayers ready, and to be frequently darting them up to Heaven during the day, lifting their minds to God out of the mire of this world. He who adopts this plan will get great fruits with little pains.

--St. Philip Neri

QUOTATION: Purity

Purity is not merely the absence of sensuality; it is selflessness born of love and the highest love of all.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Communism

The communist systems collapsed under the weight of their own fallacious economic dogmatism. Commentators have nevertheless ignored all too readily the role in this demise played by the communists’ contempt for human rights and their subjugation of morals to the demands of the system and the promises of the future. The greatest catastrophe encountered by such systems was not economic. It was the starvation of souls and the destruction of the moral conscience.

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

QUOTATION: Humility

If we consider all that is imperfect and worldly in us, we shall find ample reason for abasing ourselves before God and man, before ourselves and our inferiors.

--St. Vincent de Paul