QUOTATION: Life

The highest manifestation of life consists of this: that a being governs its own actions.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Meekness

Sanctity that is not meek is not true.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Failure to Confess

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

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: How to Dress

Be not too eager for rich apparel, for humility is incompatible with a love of display. One who is too solicitous about his dress is a slave to the opinions of men, for he certainly would not expend so much labor upon it if he thought he would not be observed. Beware, however, of going to the other extreme and dressing in a manner unsuited to your position. While claiming to despise the approbation or notice of the world, many secretly strive for it by their singularity and exaggerated simplicity.

--Louis de Granada, The Sinner's Guide

QUOTATION: Rules of Speech

How good and peaceful to be silent about others, not to believe without discrimination all that is said, not easily to report it further.

--Thomas a Kempis

QUOTATION: Perfect Faith

His faith is most perfect whose love of God is most perfect.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: Self-Selected Crosses

The crosses we impose on ourselves are always put on in a mincing kind of way, because they are our own, and therefore they are less meritorious. Humble yourself, and receive those joyfully that are imposed on you without your selection.

--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts

QUOTATION: Stubbornness Can Be a Virtue

He who by nature is coarse and violent, and who by dint of resolution becomes gentle and amiable, often be comes capable of great and difficult undertakings in the service of God ; because that very stubbornness, or that natural obstinacy, used in a good cause, knows neither defeat nor discouragement.

--St. Ignatius Loyola

QUOTATION: Joy in Suffering

There is another love of the cross which I have called rational love and which is in the higher part of man, the mind. This love is entirely spiritual; it springs from the knowledge of how happy we can be in suffering for God, and so it can be experienced by the soul, to which it gives interior joy and strength. But although this rational and perceptible joy is good, in fact, excellent, it is not always necessary in order to suffer joyfully for God's sake.

--St. Louis de Montfort, Letter to the Friends of the Cross

QUOTATION: Trust in God

If someone puts his trust in God in a matter, let him not argue with his brother about it.

--St. Mark the Ascetic

QUOTATION: The Souls in Purgatory

The souls in Purgatory pray for us, and their prayers are even more effective than ours, because they are accompanied by their suffering. So, let's pray for them, and let's pray them to pray for us.

--St. Padre Pio

QUOTATION: Sin

As a watchmaker with his glasses distinguishes the most minute wheels of a watch, so we, with the light of the Holy Ghost, distinguish all the details of our poor life. Then the smallest imperfections appear very great, the least sins inspire us with horror. That is the reason why the most Holy Virgin never sinned. The Holy Ghost made her understand the hideousness of sin; she shuddered with terror at the least fault.

--St. Jean Vianney, the Cure of Ars

QUOTATION: Jesus Depends on God the Father

Now, Jesus Christ manifests His humility in His dependence on His Divine Father. He refers to Him all glory, and declares that He Himself receives from Him His being, action, word, even His thought. If men proclaim Him good, He replies that God alone is good. If they ask of Him miracles, He invokes His Father before working them, as if demanding of Him the power to do so, and He avows that the Son has nothing of Himself: " Filius a se non habet quidquam." He is Man. His human nature is created and dependent on God. He desires to maintain it in this dependence in the eyes of all, in order to give us the most sublime example of humility, for that same humanity, by its union with the Word, was worthy of acting by itself and of receiving all homage and adoration. But Our Lord wished to inculcate humility by practising it in voluntary and and absolute dependence on His Father.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: If Virtue Comes Easy to You...

If you are a nice person—if virtue comes easily to you—beware! Much is expected from those to whom much is given.

--C.S. Lewis

QUOTATION: Helping the Poor Souls in Purgatory

Christ went down into hell to set free those that were his own. We, too, therefore, should go down there to help our own. For those who are in purgatory are themselves unable to do anything, and therefore we ought to help them. Truly he would be a harsh man indeed who failed to come to the aid of a kinsman who lay in prison, here on earth. How much more harsh, then, the man who will not aid the friend who is in purgatory, for there is no comparison between the pains there and the pains of this world.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: A Litmust Test for Humility

If you know how to preserve humility in the midst of honors and dignities you will acquire real merit and virtue, for humility in the midst of greatness is the grandest accompaniment of honors, the dignity of dignities, without which there is no true excellence.

--Louis de Granada, The Sinner's Guide

QUOTATION: Sin

Sin enters our life when the waves of the world enter through the cracks of our weakness.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: The Obstacles to Devotion

The first thing that hinders devotion are our sins, not only mortal sins but also venial sins. While little sins do not take away charity, they diminish its fervor, which is the same as devotion. So we should carefully avoid them, if not for the harm they do, at least for the great good that they prevent.

Excessive remorse of conscience that flows from our sins also impedes devotion. It makes the soul restless, depressed, faint and weak for every good practice.

Scruples obstruct devotion for the same reason. They are like thorns that prick the conscience and prevent it from resting in God and enjoying true peace.

Too many cares constitute another hindrance. They are those mosquitos from Egypt that disturb the soul. They do not allow it to sleep the spiritual sleep that lulls the soul in prayer. What’s worse, they disturb the soul and divert it from its spiritual exercise.

Preoccupation with sensual comforts is another block to devotion because the person who indulges too much in worldly delights does not deserve those of the Holy Spirit.

--St. Peter of Alcantara

QUOTATION: Does God Rejoice at Our Suffering?

But wherefore does Almighty God load us with so many crosses, and take pleasure in seeing us afflicted, reviled, persecuted, and ill-treated by the world ? Is he, perchance, a tyrant, whose cruel disposition makes him rejoice in our suffering? No: God is by no means a tyrant, nor cruel; he is all compassion and love towards us; suffice it to say, that he has died for us. He indeed does rejoice at our suffering, but for our good; inasmuch as, by suffering here, we are released hereafter from the debt of torments justly due from us to his divine justice; he rejoices in them, because they detach us from the sensual pleasures of this world: when a mother would wean her child, she puts gall on the breast, in order to create a disgust in the child; he rejoices in them, because we give him, by our patience and resignation in bearing them, a token of our love ; in fine, he rejoices in them, because they contribute to our increase of glory in heaven. Such are the reasons for which the Almighty, in his compassion and love towards us, is pleased at our suffering.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: Crosses

The best crosses are the weightiest.

--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts

QUOTATION: Truth Prevails

Truth always ends by victory ; it is not unassailable, but invincible.

--St. Ignatius Loyola

QUOTATION: Opposing Temptation

Conquer temptations by the patience and prayer. If you oppose them without these, you will fall all the more severely.

--St. Mark the Ascetic

QUOTATION: Your Merit is Not Your Own

You will say, perhaps, that since you cooperate with grace, a part of the result ought to be attributed to you, and that you may share the fruits at least by the right of the farmer whose labor increases the value of his master's lands. Not at all! Your own labor becomes valuable only by the grace which accompanies it, elevating it, rendering, it supernatural and meritorious, just as it had commenced it. Doubtless, God will reward you, but it will be His own gifts that He will crown in your merits. And so, there is no moment, neither at the commencement, the middle, nor the end, when you may consider yourself as acting by yourself, by your own strength.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: God's Love

God loves us more than a father, mother, friend, or any else could love, and even more than we are able to love ourselves

--St. John Chrysostom

QUOTATION: Meditating on Hell

Those who in their meditation often go down to hell during life, will not easily go down there at death. Such meditations are a powerful arm against sin, and a useful aid to bring a man back from sin. Daily we see men kept from evildoing by the fear of the law's punishments. How much greater care should they not take on account of the punishment of hell, greater in its duration, in its bitterness and in its variety.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Humility in High Office

The greater your position the greater should be your humility, for there is not much merit in being humble in poverty and obscurity.

--Louis de Granada, The Sinner's Guide

QUOTATION: Trust in God

Fancy a mother who playfully holds in her arms a child over the edge of a high wall, or over the brink of a precipice. Who could believe that this mother would let her child fall? Neither can I persuade myself that God will let me fall into the depths of hell if I rely on Him; therefore I repose with perfect security on the bosom of Divine Goodness much more peacefully than does a child in the arms of its mother.

--St. Paul of the Cross

QUOTATION: Self-Rejection

One of the greatest dangers in the spiritual life is self-rejection.

--Henri Nouwen

QUOTATION: Fabricated Sanctity

Many, on the other hand, fabricate a sort of sanctity according to their own inclinations; some, inclined to melancholy, make sanctity consist in living in seclusion; others, of a busy temperament, in preaching and in making up quarrels; some, of an austere nature, in penitential inflictions and macerations; others, who are naturally generous, in distributing alms; some in saying many vocal prayers; others in visiting sanctuaries; and all their sanctity consists in such or the like practices. External acts are the fruit of the love of Jesus Christ; but true love itself consists in a complete conformity to the will of God; and as a consequence of this, in deny ing ourselves and in preferring what is most pleasing to God, and solely because he deserves it.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: Taking Up One's Cross

To take up one's cross cannot mean anything else than that we should receive and suffer all the pains, contradictions, afflictions, and mortifications that happen to us in this life without any exception, with an entire submission and indifference.

--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts