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

QUOTATION: Complaining

The more we complain of our trials the heavier our burden grows.

--Blessed Giles of Assisi

QUOTATION: Perfect Love of Jesus Christ

But in order to arrive at  the  perfect love of Jesus Christ, we must adopt the means. Behold, then, the means which St. Thomas Aquinas gives us:

1. To have a constant remembrance of the benefits of God, both general and particular.

2. To consider the infinite goodness of God, who is ever waiting to do us good, and who ever loves us, and seeks from us our love.

3. To avoid even the smallest thing that could offend him.

4. To renounce all the sensible goods of this world, riches, honors, and sensual pleasures.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: God's Judgement and Mercy

If man excuses himself, God accuses him; if man accuses himself, God excuses him.

--St Francis of Assisi

QUOTATION: Evangelization

Christ sought not to gain fisherman through the orator, but by the fisherman, the emperor.

--St Augustine

QUOTATION: Gluttony

The glutton exceeds moderation either in what he eats, how much he eats, how he eats, or when he eats.

--St Isidore of Seville

QUOTATION: Modern Religion

Now conscience is a stern, gloomy principle; it tells us of guilt and of prospective punishment. Accordingly, when its terrors disappear, then disappear also, in the creed of the day, those fearful images of Divine wrath with which the Scriptures abound. They are explained away. Every thing is bright and cheerful. Religion is pleasant and easy; benevolence is the chief virtue; intolerance, bigotry, excess of zeal, are the first of sins.

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

QUOTATION: Pomp

Above all, you must be rid of the hideous idea, fruit of a widespread inferiority complex, that pomp, on the proper occasions, has any connexion with vanity or self-conceit. A celebrant approaching the altar, a princess led out by a king to dance a minuet, a general officer on a ceremonial parade, a major-domo preceding the boar’s head at a Christmas feast — all these wear unusual clothes and move with calculated dignity. This does not mean that they are vain, but that they are obedient; they are obeying the hoc age which presides over every solemnity. The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender’s inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.

--C.S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost

QUOTATION: Self-Love

Self-love exaggerates in our eyes and hearts the wrongs we have received.

--St Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Mortification

When the devil cannot turn a soul away from virtue, he tries to urge it to excessive mortification.

--St Jerome

QUOTATION: Venial Sin

For you must keep in mind that the shedding of Our Lord's blood and the sacrifice of His life were just as necessary to wipe out venial sin as to deliver you from mortal sin. Remember that anyone who attaches little importance to venial sin will soon fall into mortal sin. If you do not find these resolutions in you own soul, pray to Our Lord to put them there, and do not rest until you possess these dispositions. For you ought to know that as long as you do not have the will to die or suffer every kind of disgrace and torture rather than commit any sin, you are not a true Christian.

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

QUOTATION: Temptation

The more virtue a man has, the more he will be tempted, and the greater hatred must he have for vice.

--Blessed Giles of Assisi

QUOTATION: Christ Without The Cross

The Western post-Christian civilization has picked up the Christ without His Cross. But a Christ without a sacrifice that reconciles the world to God is a cheap, colorless, itinerant preacher who deserves to be popular for His great Sermon on the Mount, but also merits unpopularity for what He said about His Divinity on the one hand, and divorce, judgment, and hell on the other. This sentimental Christ is patched together with a thousand commonplaces, sustained sometimes by academic etymologists who cannot see the Word for the letters, or distorted beyond personal recognition by a dogmatic principle that anything which is Divine must necessarily be a myth. Without His Cross, He becomes nothing more than a sultry precursor of democracy or a humanitarian who taught brotherhood without tears.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Life of Christ

QUOTATION: Zeal

I have learned that zeal is an ardent and violent love that needs to be wisely controlled. Otherwise it might go beyond the limits of modesty and discretion. Not because divine love, however violent, can be excessive in itself, nor in the movements and inclinations it gives to our spirits, but because our understanding fails to choose the proper means or else uses them in a disorderly manner. Uncontrolled zeal takes us over rough and wild roads; moved by anger it fails to keep within the bounds of reason and pushes the heart into disorder. This is how zeal acts indiscreetly, intemperately, so that it becomes evil and reprehensible.

--St. Anthony Mary Claret

QUOTATION: Scripture

To read Sacred Scriptures means to turn to Christ for advice.

--St. Francis of Assisi

QUOTATION: Doctrine

Under no circumstances can we conceive of the possibility of change, of evolution, or of any modification in matters of faith. The Creed remains always the same.

--Pope Paul VI

QUOTATION: St. Joseph

Some saints are privileged to extend to us their patronage with particular efficacy in certain needs, but not in others; but our holy patron St. Joseph has the power to assist us in all cases, in every necessity, in every undertaking.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Why Didn't Jesus Reveal Himself to All After the Resurrection?

Now consider what would have been the probable effect of a public exhibition of His resurrection. Let us suppose that our Saviour had shown Himself as openly as before He suffered; preaching in the Temple and in the streets of the city; traversing the land with His Apostles, and with multitudes following to see the miracles which He did. What would have been the effect of this? Of course, what it had already been. His former miracles had not effectually moved the body of the people; and, doubtless, this miracle too would have left them as it found them, or worse than before. They might have been more startled at the time; but why should this amazement last? When the man taken with a palsy was suddenly restored at His word, the multitude were all amazed, and glorified God, and were filled with fear, saying, "We have seen strange things today." [Luke v. 26.] What could they have said and felt more than this, when "one rose from the dead"? In truth, this is the way of the mass of mankind in all ages, to be influenced by sudden fears, sudden contrition, sudden earnestness, sudden resolves, which disappear as suddenly. Nothing is done effectually through untrained human nature; and such is ever the condition of the multitude. Unstable as water, it cannot excel. One day it cried Hosanna; the next, Crucify Him. And, had our Lord appeared to them after they had crucified Him, of course they would have shouted Hosanna once more; and when He had ascended out of sight, then again they would have persecuted His followers. Besides, the miracle of the Resurrection was much more exposed to the cavils of unbelief than others which our Lord had displayed; than that, for instance, of feeding the multitudes in the wilderness. Had our Lord appeared in public, yet few could have touched Him, and certified themselves it was He Himself. Few, comparatively, in a great multitude could so have seen Him both before and after His death, as to be adequate witnesses of the reality of the miracle. It would have been open to the greater number of them still to deny that He was risen. This is the very feeling St. Matthew records. When He appeared on a mountain in Galilee to His apostles and others, as it would seem (perhaps the five hundred brethren mentioned by St. Paul), "some doubted" whether it were He. How could it be otherwise? these had no means of ascertaining that they really saw Him who had been crucified, dead, and buried. Others, admitting it was Jesus, would have denied that He ever died. Not having seen Him dead on the cross, they might have pretended He was taken down thence before life was extinct, and so restored. This supposition would be a sufficient excuse to those who wished not to believe. And the more ignorant part would fancy they had seen a spirit without flesh and bones as man has. They would have resolved the miracle into a magical illusion, as the Pharisees had done before, when they ascribed His works to Beelzebub; and would have been rendered no better or more religious by the sight of Him, than the common people are now-a-days by tales of apparitions and witches.

Surely so it would have been; the chief priests would not have been moved at all; and the populace, however they had been moved at the time, would not have been lastingly moved, not practically moved, not so moved as to proclaim to the world what they had heard and seen, as to preach the Gospel. This is the point to be kept in view: and consider that the very reason why Christ showed Himself at all was in order to raise up witnesses  to His resurrection, ministers of His word, founders of His Church; and how in the nature of things could a populace ever become such?

--Blessed John Henry Newman, "Witnesses of the Resurrection", Parochial and Plain Sermons

QUOTATION: The Price of Redemption

It costs God nothing, so far as we know, to create nice things: but to convert rebellious wills cost Him crucifixion.

--C.S. Lewis

QUOTATION: God

To examine whether your heart please Him is not necessary, but rather whether His heart pleases you.

--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts

QUOTATION: Love of Crosses

On the Way of the Cross, you see, my children, only the first step is painful. Our greatest cross is the fear of crosses. . . . We have not the courage to carry our cross, and we are very much mistaken; for, whatever we do, the cross holds us tight - we cannot escape from it. What, then, have we to lose? Why not love our crosses and make use of them to take us to Heaven?

--St. Jean Vianney, The Cure of Ars

QUOTATION: To Be a Real Christian

As long as you do not have the will to die or suffer every kind of disgrace and torture rather than commit any sin, you are not a true Christian

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

QUOTATION: Truth

Obedience to Truth is obedience to Love.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Fear of Hurting Feelings

You want people to suffer forever in hell but you don't want to hurt their feelings now? What kind of love is that?

--Mother Angelica