QUOTATION: Doctrine

If one yields ground on any single point of Catholic doctrine, one will later have to yield later in another, and again in another, and so on until such surrenders come to be something normal and acceptable. And when one gets used to rejecting dogma bit by bit, the final result will be the repudiation of it altogether.

-- St. Vincent of Lerins

QUOTATION: Speaking of One's Pain

Speaking about our own pain is seldom helpful for someone who is in pain.

--Henri Nouwen

QUOTATION: The Life of Sin

He who lives in sin takes up the habits and the appearance of the beasts. The beast, which has not reason, knows nothing but its appetites. So the man who makes himself like the beasts loses his reason, and lets himself be guided by the inclinations of his body. He takes his pleasure in good eating and drinking, and in enjoying the vanities of the world, which pass away like the wind

-- St. Jean Vianney, the Cure of Ars

QUOTATION: Helping the Poor

Jesus tells us very clearly that if we don’t help the poor, we’re going to go to hell. Period. There’s just no doubt about it. That has to be a foundational concern of Catholics and of all Christians. But Jesus didn’t say the government has to take care of them, or that we have to pay taxes to take care of them. Those are prudential judgments.

--Archbishop Charles J. Chaput

QUOTATION: The Talkative Soul

The Lord gave me to know how displeased He is with a talkative soul. I find no rest in such a soul. The constant din tires Me, and in the midst of it the soul cannot discern My voice.

--St. Faustina Kowalska

QUOTATION: Satan

If you haven’t met opposition from Satan recently, you’re probably going his way.

--C.S. Lewis

QUOTATION: Relativism and the Abortion Debate

Contemporary relativism, however, tends to place light and darkness on an equal metaphysical footing. For example, strict relativists, who do not anchor their choices in the firm foundation of real being, regard choice to be self-justifying. That is, they affirm choice apart from any consideration as to whether it relates to the real world. The choice to abort, for relativists, proceeds independently of any knowledge of the nature of what one is doing or likely consequences that will follow. Thus, "pro-choice" advocates staunchly oppose any kind of illumination that would shed light on the nature of the fetus, the psychological or physical consequences of abortion, as well as the logical impact abortion has on marriage, the family, and society. As far as the "pro-choice" position is concerned, light and darkness are equally irrelevant.

--Donald DeMarco

QUOTATION: Clothing

It might be said that society speaks through the clothing it wears. Through its clothing it reveals its secret aspirations and uses it, at least in part, to build or destroy the future.

--Pope Pius XII

QUOTATION: The Second Vatican Council

They are the dead burying the dead, and they call it reform.

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) on the hijacking of the Second Vatican Council

QUOTATION: Discouragement

When you fail to measure up to your Christian privilege, be not discouraged for discouragement is a form of pride. The reason you are sad is because you looked to yourself and not to God; to your failings not to His love. You will shake off your faults more readily when you love God than when you criticize yourself. God is more lenient than you because he is perfectly good and therefore loves you more. Be bold enough then to believe that God is on your side, even when you forget to be on His.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Preface to Religion

QUOTATION: Becoming the Beast

If, in order to defeat the beast, we in turn become the beast, the beast has won.

--Fr. Henri Nouwen

QUOTATION: Love of Jesus

What a weakness it is to love Jesus Christ only when He caresses us, and to be cold immediately once He afflicts us. This is not true love. Those who love thus, love themselves too much to love God with all their heart.

--St. Margaret Mary Alacoque

QUOTATION: Consolation

You will be consoled according to the greatness of your sorrow and affliction; the greater the suffering, the greater will be the reward.

--St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi

QUOTATION: Suffering

When it is all over you will not regret having suffered; rather you will regret having suffered so little, and suffered that little so badly.

--Blessed Sebastian Valfre

QUOTATION: Mercy and Punishment

God is not the Father of Judgement, but only the Father of Mercy, and punishment comes from our own selves.

--St. Bernard of Clairvaux

QUOTATION: Occasions of Sin

That hope is deceitful which hopes to be saved amid the occasions of sin.

- St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Prayer

The efficacy of prayer does not consist in giving God new knowledge or inducing him to change his intentions. Rather, it consists in creating conditions under which God can appropriately give gifts that he eternally wills to give, provided that the necessary conditions have been met. The change brought about by prayer is not a change in God, but in the created world.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Women in the Passion of Christ

Though men failed in this crisis (of Calvary) there is no instance of a single woman failing. In the four trials the voice heard in Christ's defense was that of a woman, Claudia Procul, the wife of Pontius Pilate...On Calvary it is woman who is fearless, for there are several of them at the foot of the Cross. Magdalene, among them as usual, is prostrate. But there is one whose courage and devotion was so remarkable that the Evangelist who was there indicated the detail that she was "standing." That woman was the mother of the man on the central cross. Our Blessed Lord willed her presence there. Since he was the second Adam undoing the sin of the first, Mary would be the new Eve proclaiming the new race of the redeemed.

-- Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Love

Love consumes us only in the measure of our self-surrender.

--St. Therese of Lisieux

QUOTATION: Spilling Your Guts

Do not tell everyone your story. You will only end up feeling more rejected. People cannot give you what you long for in your heart.

--Henri Nouwen

QUOTATION: Self-Mastery

A man who governs his passions is master of his world. We must either command them or be enslaved by them. It is better to be a hammer than an anvil.

--St. Dominic

QUOTATION: The Flesh Versus The Spirit

Those who live "by the flesh" experience God's law as a burden, and indeed as a denial or at least a restriction on their own freedom. On the other hand, those who are impelled by love and "walk by the Spirit", and who desire to serve others, find in God's Law the fundamental and necessary way in which to practice love as something freely chosen and freely lived out. Indeed, they feel an interior urge- a genuine "necessity" and no longer a form of coercion- not to stop at the minimum demands of the Law, but to live them in their "fullness." This is a still uncertain and fragile journey as we are on earth, but it is one made possible by grace, which enables us to possess the full freedom of the children of God and thus to live our moral life in a way worthy of our sublime vocation as "sons in the Son.

--Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor

QUOTATION: Wasting Time

What are we doing? Unlearned people are taking heaven by force. Yet we, with all our knowledge, are so cowardly that we keep rolling around in the mud of our sins.

--St. Augustine to his friends before his conversion.

QUOTATION: Knowledge

Knowledge is very well in its place, but it is like flowers without fruit. We cannot feed on knowledge, we cannot thrive on knowledge. Just as the leaves of the grove are very beautiful but would make a bad meal, so we shall ever be hungry and never be satisfied if we think to take knowledge for our food. Knowledge is no food. Religion is our only food. Here then is another mortification. Mortify your desire of knowledge. Do not go into excess in seeking after truths which are not religious.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, Sermon 5, “Surrender to God” in Faith and Prejudices and Other Sermons, 1848

QUOTATION: Poverty

When I was by myself, I began to reflect on the spirit of poverty, I clearly saw that Jesus, although He is Lord of all things, possessed nothing. From a borrowed manger He went through life doing good to all, but himself having no place to lay His Head. And on the Cross, I see the summit of His poverty, for He does not even have a garment on himself. O Jesus, through Your solemn vow of poverty I desire to become like You; poverty will be my mother. As exteriorly we should possess nothing and have nothing to dispose of as our own, so interiorly we should desire nothing.

--St. Faustina Kowalska

QUOTATION: Evangelization

The Apostle does not preach Christianity 'a la carte,' according to his own tastes, he does not preach a Gospel according to his own preferred theological ideas; he does not take away from the commitment to announce the entire will of God, even when uncomfortable, nor the themes he may least like personally. It is our mission to announce all the will of God, in its totality and ultimate simplicity.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Eucharistic Adoration

Know also that you will probably gain more by praying fifteen minutes before the Blessed Sacrament than by all the other spiritual exercises of the day. True, Our Lord hears our prayers anywhere, for He has made the promise, ‘Ask, and you shall receive,’ but He has revealed to His servants that those who visit Him in the Blessed Sacrament will obtain a more abundant measure of grace.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori

QUOTATION: Our Pagan World

Even as the first disciples faced a pagan world which had not even heard of our Lord Jesus Christ, so, we, too face a culture which is forgetful of God and hostile to His law.

--Cardinal Raymond Burke

QUOTATION: Mercy

Worldly souls are very fond of thinking of God’s mercy. And so they are encouraged to persist in their follies.

--St. Josemaria Escriva

QUOTATION: Spiritual Dryness

Sometimes we experience a terrible dryness in our spiritual life. We feel no desire to pray, don’t experience God’s presence, get bored with worship services, and even think that everything we have ever believed about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is little more than a childhood fairy tale.

Then it is important to realize that most of these feelings and thoughts are just feelings and thoughts, and that the Spirit of God dwells beyond our feelings and thoughts. It is a great grace to be able to experience God’s presence in our feelings and thoughts, but when we don’t, it does not mean that God is absent. It often means that God is calling us to a greater faithfulness. It is precisely in those times of spiritual dryness that we must hold on to our spiritual discipline so that we can grow into new intimacy with God.

--Fr. Henri Nouwen

QUOTATION: Fear of Good People

The wicked fear the good because the good are a constant reproach to their conscience.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen