QUOTATION: Correction

Reprimand and rebuke should be accepted as healing remedies for vice and as conducive to good health. From this it is clear that those who pretend to be tolerant because they wish to flatter——-those who thus fail to correct sinners——-actually cause them to suffer supreme loss and plot the destruction of that life which is their true life.

--St. Basil the Great

QUOTATION: Madness

A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him, saying, "You are mad; you are not like us."

--St. Anthony of Egypt

QUOTATION: Hidden Life for God

If we don't have a hidden life with God, our public life for God cannot bear fruit.

--Henri Nouwen

QUOTATION: Freedom of Speech

It is not fitting for an emperor to deny freedom of speech, or for a bishop not to say what he thinks. There is no quality in emperors so popular and estimable as the willingness to cherish freedom even in those whom you have subdued on the battlefield. The difference between good and bad emperors is that the good love freedom, the bad slavery.

--St. Ambrose, Letters, 40.

QUOTATION: Forgiveness

The forgiveness of God is one thing, but the proof that we want that forgiveness is the energy we expend to make amends for the wrong.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: The Blessed Mother Versus Satan

Modern times are dominated by Satan and will be more so in the future. The conflict with hell cannot be engaged by men, even the most clever. The lmmaculata alone has from God the promise of victory over Satan. However, assumed into heaven, the Mother of God now requires our cooperation. She seeks souls who will consecrate themselves entirely to her, who will become in her hands effective instruments for the defeat of Satan and the spreading of God's kingdom upon earth.

--St. Maximilian Kolbe

QUOTATION: Against Class Warfare

The rich exist for the sake of the poor. The poor exist for the salvation of the rich.

--St. John Chrysostom

QUOTATION: Loving God

But you will say, it is hard that we should, for the love of God, be sometimes compelled to lose our property, friends, and even life itself. I acknowledge that it is so to those who love not God: but to those who do love Him, and desire to possess Him, I assert that it is very easy, especially since, if we despise temporal goods for the love of God, we shall possess those that are incomparably superior to them.

--St. Robert Bellarmine, Eternal Happiness of the Saints

QUOTATION: Defending Virtue

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.

--G.K. Chesterton

QUOTATION: Saints and Sinners

There is no saint without a past, no sinner without a future.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Politics

Wherever politics tries to be redemptive, it is promising too much. Where it wishes to do the work of God, it becomes not divine, but demonic.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Prayer

In whatever state the soul may be, it ought to pray. A soul which is pure and beautiful must pray or else it’ll lose its beauty. A soul which is striving after this purity must pray or else it will fall again. A sinful soul plunged in sins must pray so that it might rise again. There is no soul which is not bound to pray. For every single grace comes to the soul through prayer.

--St. Faustina Kowalska

QUOTATION: Hell

Although Christ wholly overcame death, yet not so completely did He destroy hell, but, as it were, He bit it. He did not free all from hell, but those only who were without mortal sin. He likewise liberated those without original sin, from which they, as individuals, were freed by circumcision; or before [the institution of] circumcision, they who had been saved through their parents' faith (which refers to those who died before having the use of reason); or by the sacrifices, and by their faith in the future coming of Christ (which refers to adults).

--St. Thomas Aquinas, The Catechetical Instructions of St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Forgiveness

I think that if God forgives us we must forgive ourselves. Otherwise it is almost like setting up ourselves as a higher tribunal than Him.

--C.S. Lewis

QUOTATION: Responsibility

It must be remembered that every flight from responsibility is a flight from liberty. Perhaps it is the very burden of responsibility that flows from free choice that makes so many ready to surrender their great gift of freedom.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Truth

Truth suffers, but never dies.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: Worldly Desires

As long as our hearts keep vacillating among the many wants of the world, we cannot move forward in life with inner peace and joy.

--Fr. Henri Nouwen

QUOTATION: How to Believe

We all must have the faith of children, but the doctrine of theologians.

--St. Josemaria Escriva

QUOTATION: Hell

To the irreligious person heaven would be hell.

--Blessed John Henry Newman

QUOTATION: Justice in the Next Life

We shall also see with feelings of pleasure, the crimes and torments of the damned, in which the sanctity of the good, and the justice of God will wonderfully shine forth; for then the just will wash their hands in the blood of the wicked, as the prophet saith. And what doth "washing their hands in the blood of the wicked" signify, but that the good works of the blessed will shine more brightly, in comparison with the works of the wicked? The virginity of some will be more resplendent, when compared with the adulteries of others: and the fasts and alms-deeds of many, when compared with the gluttony and revellings of others. It will then be said: this young man was beautiful, and yet he observed perpetual chastity: this other youth was beautiful also, but not content with his own wife, he often committed adulteries and sacrileges. This man was rich and of noble extraction, and yet he fasted and prayed often, and gave abundant alms: another was equally rich and of noble extraction, but being addicted to gluttony and drunkenness, he spent his money in pleasures, so that he had nothing to give to the poor. Hence it will be, that the joy of the Just will be increased, by knowing the crimes of the wicked. At the same time, their joy will also be great, from the contemplation of the justice which will be so conspicuous, in the rewards of the blessed and the punishment of the wicked.

--St. Robert Bellarmine, The Eternal Happiness of the Saints

QUOTATION:Evangelization

Anyone who has discovered Christ must lead others to him. A great joy cannot be kept to oneself. It has to be passed on.

--Pope Benedict XVI, 2005 World Youth Day

QUOTATION: Hurt

You must expect that these poor sinners in the Church are going to get hurt and that they are going to hurt each other. To be let down by the Church is not a reason to leave her, any more than to be let down by your family is a reason to give up family life and move to a desert island. Are there any who have not been hurt by members of their family? In his ‘City of God’, St. Augustine wisely observed that it breaks the heart of any good person to see that even in one’s own home one is not in a safe place and that one may be attacked even there by an enemy posing as a friend or even by an enemy who used to be a loved one. If we all gave up on the human race because we have been hurt, we’d have to move to separate planets.

--Fr. Benedict Groeschel, C.F.R. - “Arise from Darkness”

QUOTATION: Responsibility

When a poor person dies of hunger, it has not happened because God did not take care of him or her. It has happened because neither you nor I wanted to give that person what he or she needed.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta

QUOTATION: Meditating Hell

Indeed, he who during this life frequently descends into hell by thinking of it, will not easily fall into hell at death; for such meditation keeps one from sin, and draws one out of it. We see how men of this world guard themselves against wrongdoing because of the temporal punishment; but with how much more care ought they avoid the punishment of hell which far exceeds all else in its duration, its severity, and its varied nature!

--St. Thomas Aquinas, The Catechetical Instruction of St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Mortification

That joke, that witty remark held on the tip of your tongue; the cheerful smile for those who annoy you; that silence when you’re unjustly accused; your friendly conversation with people whom you find boring and tactless; the daily effort to overlook one irritating detail or another in the persons who live with you… this, with perseverance, is indeed solid interior mortification.

--St. Josemaria Escriva

QUOTATION: Physical Comfort

Our body has this defect that, the more it is provided care and comforts, the more needs and desires it finds.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: Self-Knowledge

As soon as we begin to see our own limitations, we perceive perfection in others.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Suffering

To refuse suffering is to refuse personal growth.

--Fr. Henri Nouwen

QUOTATION: Witness

We believe fishermen, not dialecticians.

-St. Ambrose of Milan

QUOTATION: What We Will See in Heaven

But not only the sight of God is promised to the good in heaven, but also the sight of all those things which God hath made. Here on earth we perceive by our eyes the sun, moon, stars; the sea, rivers, animals, trees and minerals. But our mind does not know the substance of these created things, their essential difference, their properties or power: we cannot see even our own soul, but like blind men we feel for effects, and by reasoning, acquire a little knowledge. What then will be the joy, when our mind in the vision of God, will clearly see the substance of all things, their difference, properties and power! And what great exultation will be ours, when we shall behold the innumerable army of angels, not one of whom resembles another, and shall clearly see the difference of all! What unbounded joy will it be, when we shall behold those holy men, who have been from the beginning of the world even unto the end, united together with all the angels! When we shall behold the merits of each, their crowns and palms of victory!

--St. Robert Bellarmine, Eternal Happiness of the Saints

QUOTATION: The Bible

The Bible was composed in such a way that as beginners mature, its meaning grows with them.

--St. Augustine, Confessions