QUOTATION: Holiness

You must be holy in the way that God asks you to be holy. God does not ask you to be a Trappist monk or a hermit. He wills that you sanctify the world and your everyday life.

--St. Vincent Pallotti

QUOTATION: Abortion

Abortion is the only event that modern liberals think too violent and obscene to portray on TV. This is not because they are squeamish or prudish. It is because if people knew what abortion really looked like, it would destroy their pretence that it is a civilized answer to the problem of what to do about unwanted babies.

--Peter Hitchens

QUOTATION: Knowledge of One's Sins

Till you know the weight of your sins, and that not in mere imagination, but in practice, not so as merely to confess it in a formal phrase of lamentation, but daily and in your heart in secret, you cannot embrace the offer of mercy held out to you in the Gospel, through the death of Christ.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, "The Religion of the Day", Parochial and Plain Sermons

QUOTATION: God's Mercy

The blood of Jesus cries out, and asks mercy for us; and cries out so loudly that the noise of our sins is not heard.

--St. John of Avila

QUOTATION: Patience

If we are to be patient with others, we must be equally so with ourselves.

--St Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: The Birth of Christ

God’s sign is simplicity. God’s sign is the baby. God’s sign is that he makes himself small for us. This is how he reigns. He does not come with power and outward splendour. He comes as a baby – defenceless and in need of our help. He does not want to overwhelm us with his strength. He takes away our fear of his greatness. He asks for our love: so he makes himself a child. He wants nothing other from us than our love, through which we spontaneously learn to enter into his feelings, his thoughts and his will – we learn to live with him and to practise with him that humility of renunciation that belongs to the very essence of love. God made himself small so that we could understand him, welcome him, and love him.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Christmas Homily, 2006

QUOTATION: Mary Forms Christ in Us

All love tends to become like that which it loves. God loved man; therefore He became man. For nine months her own body was the natural Eucharist, in which God shared communion with human life, thus preparing for that greater Eucharist when human life would commune with the Divine. Mary’s joy was to form Christ in her own body; her joy now is to form Christ in our souls. In this Mystery, we pray to become pregnant with the Christ spirit, giving Him new lips with which He may speak of His Father, new hands with which He may feed the poor, and a new heart with which He may love everyone, even enemies.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen, The Fifteen Mysteries of the Rosary

QUOTATION: Last Judgement

It is true that we shall have to render a rigorous account to the Eternal Judge of all our sins. But who is to be our Judge? The Father hath committed all judgment to the Son. Let us comfort ourselves, the Eternal Father has committed our judgment to our own Redeemer. Therefore, St. Paul encourages us, saying, Who is he that shall condemn? Christ Jesus who died, . . . who also maketh intercession for us. Who is the judge to condemn us? It is that same Saviour who, in order not to condemn us to everlasting death, vouchsafed himself to be condemned and to die; and not content with this, at this moment intercedes with his Father for our salvation.

--St. Alphonsus Ligouri, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: Giving Up One's Own Opinion

Whenever an occasion of disagreement arises because of natural differences of opinion, no matter how sure you may be that you are right, be glad to give up your own opinion and yield to that of someone else, provided the glory of God be not concerned in the matter.

--St. John Eudes, The Four Foundations of Sanctity

QUOTATION: Evil

In our time more than ever before, the chief strength of the wicked, lies in the cowardice and weakness of good men.

--Pope St. Pius X

QUOTATION: Christmas

The great majority of people will go on observing forms that cannot be explained; they will keep Christmas Day with Christmas gifts and Christmas benedictions; they will continue to do it; and some day suddenly wake up and discover why.

--G.K. Chesterton, Generally Speaking

QUOTATION: Love Thy Neighbour

The precept to love our neighbor requires us to be not only well-wishers, but well-doers.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Giving Alms

When giving alms, you should give so as not to injure yourself or another.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Fear of the Lord

The fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; till you see Him to be a consuming fire, and approach Him with reverence and godly fear, as being sinners, you are not even in sight of the strait gate.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, "The Religion of the Day", Parochial and Plain Sermons

QUOTATION: Crosses

Men are generally the carpenters of their own crosses.

--St. Philip Neri

QUOTATION: Fighting Evil

We must not believe the Evil One when he tells us that there is nothing we can do in the face of violence, injustice and sin.

--Pope Francis

QUOTATION: Perfection

Our perfection consists in combating our imperfections.

--St Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Religion

The ambivalence of the concept of Magi that we find here illustrates the ambivalence of religion in general. It can become the path to true knowledge, the path to Jesus Christ. But when it fails, in his presence, to open up to him and actually opposes the one God and Saviour, it becomes demonic and destructive.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives.

QUOTATION: Vainglory in Charity

Never omit a good action from fear of vainglory; if vainglory trouble you, it will not hinder you from becoming perfect, and the best part of your good action will always be yours.

--Blessed Giles of Assisi

QUOTATION: Friends

Do not make friends with any persons except those whom you can help, or those who can help you and animate you, by word and example, to love Jesus and live in His spirit.

--St. John Eudes, The Four Foundations of Sanctity

QUOTATION: Communion

In Holy Communion Jesus unites himself to the soul, and the soul to Jesus; and this is not a union of mere affection, but it is a true and real union.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: Christmas

There is no more dangerous or disgusting habit than that of celebrating Christmas before it comes, as I am doing in this article. It is the very essence of a festival that it breaks upon one brilliantly and abruptly, that at one moment the great day is not and the next moment the great day is.

--G. K. Chesterton, “Christmas”

QUOTATION: Love Thy Neighbour

The precept to love our neighbor requires us to be not only well-wishers, but well-doers.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Alms

Give alms from your just earnings; you cannot bribe Christ your judge.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Crosses

If you bear  this cross and burden well, He will send you interior and more painful trials, which He keeps for His dearest friends, to conform them to Himself. For though Christ's visible cross was great, it was not to be compared to that which, unknown to men, He bore in His soul.

--St. John of Avila, Letters, VII

QUOTATION: Modern Religion

On the other hand, the form of doctrine, which I have called the religion of the day, is especially adapted to please men of sceptical minds, the opposite extreme to those just mentioned, who have never been careful to obey their conscience, who cultivate the intellect without disciplining the heart, and who allow themselves to speculate freely about what religion ought to be, without going to Scripture to discover what it really is.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, "The Religion of the Day", Parochial and Plain Sermons

QUOTATION: Pride

As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

QUOTATION: God's Will

If I desire and seek God's will, what does it matter whether it be presented in tribulation or consolation?

--St Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Worldliness

As long as we love the things of the world we lose the fruits of divine love. We cannot serve two masters.

--St Clare of Assisi

QUOTATION: Friendship with the World

As long as you seek out and love the company of men of the world, Jesus Christ whose delight it is to be with the children of men will not take His delight in you and will not give you any taste of the consolations with which He refreshes those who find all their joy in conversing with Him.

--St. John Eudes, The Four Foundations of Sanctity