QUOTATION: Deceit in Business

There is a considerable tendency in occupations connected with gain to make a man unfair in his dealings,—that is, in a subtle way. There are so many conventional deceits and prevarications in the details of the world's business, so much intricacy in the management of accounts, so many perplexed questions about justice and equity, so many plausible subterfuges and fictions of law, so much confusion between the distinct yet approximating outlines of honesty and civil enactment, that it requires a very straightforward mind to keep firm hold of strict conscientiousness, honour, and truth, and to look at matters in which he is engaged, as he would have looked on them, supposing he now came upon them all at once as a stranger.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, "The Danger of Riches", Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 2

QUOTATION: Humility

Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Regular Confession

It is very helpful to confess with a certain regularity. It is true our sins are always the same; but we clean our homes, our rooms, at least once a week even if the dirt is always the same, in order to live in cleanliness, in order to start again. Otherwise, the dirt might not be seen, but it builds up.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Dogma

If today there are not nearly so many dogmas defined as in the early ages of the Church it is because there is less controversy — and less thinking. One must think to be a heretic, even though it be wrong thinking.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Social Doctrine

The Church's social doctrine is not a third way between liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism, nor even a possible alternative to other solutions less radically opposed to one another: rather, it constitutes a category of its own.

--Pope St. John Paul II

QUOTATION: Obedience

For our obedience to be cheerful and prompt, we have to be convinced that it is Jesus that we obey.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Where There is Love, There is God, Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C., Ed.

QUOTATION: Mary, Our Mother

The Christians who does not feel that Virgin Mary is his mother is an orphan.

--Pope Francis

QUOTATION: Crosses

If you seek to carry no other crosses but those whose reason you understand, perfection is not for you.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: A Resolute Will

A resolute will overcomes everything; for when once a soul determines really to give itself wholly to God, God immediately gives it the hand and the strength to surmount all difficulties that may occur in the way of perfection.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Incarnation, Birth and Infancy of Jesus Christ

QUOTATION: We Must Choose Our Master

We may choose our master, but God or mammon we must serve. We cannot possibly be in a neutral or intermediate state. Such a state does not exist. If we will not be Christ's servants, we are forthwith Satan's; and Christ set us free from Satan only by making us His servants. Satan's kingdom touches upon Christ's, the world touches on the Church; and we cease to be Satan's property by becoming Christ's.

--Blessed John Henry Newman,"The Strictness of the Law of Christ", Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 4

QUOTATION: Atheism

It is not true, as is sometimes said, that man cannot organize the world without God. What is true is that, without God, he can ultimately only organize it against man. Exclusive humanism is inhuman humanism.

--Henri de Lubac, The Drama of Atheistic Humanism

QUOTATION: The Darkening of Reason

One of the greatest evils that the sin of Adam has produced in us, is that darkening of our reason by means of the passions which cloud our mind. Oh, how miserable is that soul that allows itself to be ruled by any passion! Passion, is as it were, a vapor, a veil which prevents us from seeing the truth. How can he fly from evil, who does not know what is evil? Besides, this obscurity increases in proportion as our sins increase.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori, The Holy Eucharist

QUOTATION: Obedience

Yes, dear brethren, we may safely say that the Saints found all their happiness in keeping the commandments, and that they would sooner have endured martyrdom than to transgress them: and did not the martyrs suffer tortures and death, just because they would not transgress the commandments of God? What shame for us then, dear brethren, when at the judgment day we will face these martyrs; we who so often are prompted in our actions by even the mere thought of "What will the world say?"

--St. Jean Vianney, the Cure of Ars

QUOTATION: Silence

Let us leave a little room for reflection, room too for silence. Enter into yourself, and leave behind all noise and confusion. Look with yourself. See whether there be some delightful hidden place in your consciousness where you can be free of noise and argument, where you need not be carrying on your disputes and planning to have your own stubborn way. Hear the word in quietness that you may understand it.

--St. Augustine, Sermon 52:22

QUOTATION: Spiritual Corruption

It would be fair to say that sins are forgiven but corruption cannot be forgiven. This is simply because at the bottom of every corrupt attitude is a weariness with the transcendent: instead of God, who never tires of forgiving, the corrupt person sets himself up as sufficient for his own salvation-- he has tired of asking for forgiveness.

--Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (Pope Francis), "Corruption and  Sin",  The Way of Humility, 2005

QUOTATION: Heaven is Not Simply Given

We are on earth only to render ourselves worthy of heaven. But heaven is not given; it has to be purchased. Little children who die after Baptism receive it without personal merit, it is true. Our Lord pays for them, but adults receive it only on a title of justice, Coronam justitice. True it is that God gives us the means of meriting it, but we must correspond with His grace and faithfully employ those means. He gives and He recompenses in us His own gifts, if we have rendered them fruitful. Thus does He reconcile the goodness of His mercy and the requirements of His justice.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Self-Acceptance

If an individual is to accept himself,someone must say to him:' It is good that you exist'-must say it,not with words,but with that act of the entire being that we call LOVE.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Christianity and Science

Christianity, by emphasizing discipline, reason, and the value of nature as such, became the rock on which empirical science was founded. Science arose and could arise only in a Christian civilization. The East, lacking this foundation, never became scientific. Science is not inimical to a Christian civilization, for it has flourished only in a Christian civilization. It has not flourished in a Buddhist civilization, nor amongst the Mohammedans, for the reason that a pantheistic civilization that confuses God and the world can never get hold of the world alone to study it scientifically. The Christian conception, on the contrary, makes God and the world distinct, and therefore make it possible for a man to study the universe as the universe. In doing this, man follows out the injunction of the Creator, Who commanded man to rule over the earth and subject it. 

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Old Errors and New Labels

QUOTATION: God's Love for Us

Consider God's charity. Where else have we ever seen someone who has been offended voluntarily paying out his life for those who have offended him?

--St. Catherine of Siena

QUOTATION: Holiness

The holier I become the more souls I can draw to God. Each of us has a certain number of souls dependent on us for salvation. The holier I become, the closer they will draw to God.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Where There is Love, There is God, Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C., Ed.

QUOTATION: Prayer

When one does not love prayer, it is morally impossible for him to resist his passions.

--St. Alphonsus Liguori

QUOTATION: Injustice

You don't adapt to injustice; you oppose it.

--Father Frank Pavone

QUOTATION: Christianity

Christianity is greatest when it is hated by the world.

--St. Ignatius of Antioch, Letter to Romans, 3:3

QUOTATION: Desire Nothing, Refuse Nothing

Engrave then on your memory these two precious maxims, which I have already so often recommended to you: Desire nothing, refuse nothing. Look upon the little Jesus in the crib; He receives poverty, nakedness, the society of beasts, the inclemency of the weather, and all that His Father permits to happen to Him. It is not written that He ever reached out His hands to be lifted up into the bosom of His Mother. He abandoned Himself entirely to her care and her foresight. He did not refuse the little comforts she gave Him, and received the services of St. Joseph, the adorations and presents of the shepherds and the kings, all with a holy equanimity. We ought to act in like manner, and, after the example of Our Divine Saviour, neither ask any thing nor refuse any thing, but be equally willing to suffer and to receive whatever the Providence of God may permit to befall us.

--St. Francis de Sales, Consoling Thoughts

QUOTATION: The Church's Role

The Church does not change God’s revelation, but attempts to change us so we can live it.

--Cardinal Timothy Dolan, blog, October 21, 2014

QUOTATION: When Praying to God...

You can't give God deadlines.

--St. Padre Pio

QUOTATION: Spiritual Worldliness

Spiritual worldliness is nothing other than a radically anthropocentric attitude. This attitude would be irremediable in the case-- supposing it were possible-- of a man endowed with all spiritual perfections who did not refer them to God.

--Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio (Pope Francis), "Corruption and  Sin",  The Way of Humility, 2005

QUOTATION: The Church in Danger

The Church is in danger when the laity are more spiritual than the clergy.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION:

The greatest saints are truly persuaded that they are only great sinners, and they say it as they think it. Some look upon this expression as exaggerated. They cannot believe it, they say. And yet the saints are really convinced that they are the greatest sinner before God, because they have true humility and patience, which are the means of knowing one's misery in its very depths.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: The Real Jesus

Today in broad circles, even among believers, an image has prevailed of a Jesus who demands nothing, never scolds, who accepts everyone and everything, who no longer does anything but affirm us.

The Jesus of the Gospels is quite different, demanding, bold. The Jesus who makes everything okay for everyone is a phantom, a dream, not a real figure. The Jesus of the Gospels is certainly not convenient for us.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Souls in Purgatory

I believe no happiness can be found worthy to be compared with that of a soul in Purgatory except that of the saints in Paradise; and day by day  this happiness grows as God flows into these souls, more and more as the hindrance to His entrance is consumed.

--St. Catherine of Genoa

QUOTATION: Love

Love transforms one into what one loves.

--St. Catherine of Siena

QUOTATION: Hell

How did the angels become devils? They were all in the sight of God. Lucifer, the angel of light, became the devil of darkness. We read that God gave them a test, that when the Son of God will become man, [they should serve Him]; in their pride, they said "non serviam." Hell was not in the original plan of God, but God was forced to create it.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Where There is Love, There is God, Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C., Ed.

QUOTATION: Noise

Noise doesn't do any good. Good doesn't make any noise.

--St. Vincent de Paul.

QUOTATION: The Paradox of Divine Love

By a beautiful paradox of Divine love, God makes His Cross the very means of our salvation and our life. We have slain Him; we have nailed Him there and crucified Him; but the Love in His eternal heart could not be extinguished. He willed to give us the very life we slew; to give us the very Food we destroyed; to nourish us with the very Bread we buried, and the very Blood we poured forth. He made our very crime into a happy fault; He turned a Crucifixion into a Redemption; a Consecration into a Communion; a death into Life Everlasting.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, This is the Mass

QUOTATION: Mortal Sin

According to the holy Doctors, for every mortal sin a man is obliged by God to seven years of penance in this world, or the equivalent in purgatory; the reason being that every mortal sin is an offense against the seven Gifts of the Holy Ghost.

--St. Vincent Ferrer

QUOTATION: Prayer

Doubt not the power of faith and prayer to effect all things with God. However you try, you cannot do works to compare with those which faith and prayer accomplish in the name of Christ. Did you give your body to be burned, and all your goods to feed the poor, you could not do so much as by continual intercession. Few are rich, few can suffer for Christ; all may pray. Were you an Apostle of the Church, or a Prophet, you could not do more than you can do by the power of prayer.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, "Religious Worship a Remedy for Excitements" Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 3

QUOTATION: Knowing God

I do not know you God because I am in the way. Please help me to push myself aside.

--Flannery O'Connor

QUOTATION: Seeking Truth

Anyone who seeks Truth seeks God, whether or not he realizes it.

--St.Teresia Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stein)

QUOTATION: The Results of Sin

Since the aptness for grace is part of human nature’s good estate, we can now appreciate how sin diminishes nature. And because grace perfects nature, heightening mind and will and the sensitive parts which serve reason, we can appreciate also how sin, by depriving us of grace and clogging our natural abilities, also hurts nature. The results of sin are ignorance, malice, and concupiscence, and these are called the wounds of nature.

--St. Thomas Aquinas, Disputations Concerning Evil, 11, 11.

QUOTATION: The Crucifix

The crucifix does not signify defeat or failure. It reveals to us the love that overcomes evil and sin.

--Pope Francis

QUOTATION: God Does Not Owe Us Friendship

You might say that it was very unjust of God to deprive us of friendship with Him, and of these other gifts, simply because Adam sinned. There would have been injustice if God deprived you of your due, but you are no more entitled to be a child of God than a razor has a right to bloom, or a rose has the right to bark, or a dog has the right to quote Dante. What Adam lost was gifts, not a heritage. On Christmas Day, when you distribute gifts to your friends, would I have a right to say to you: Why do you not give me a gift? You would answer: I am not doing you an injustice, because I owe you nothing. I am not obliged to give these gifts to my friends. If I had not given them gifts, I would not have deprived them of anything I owed them, So, neither did God owe us anything beyond our nature as a creature of his handiwork.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Preface to Religion

QUOTATION: Our Final Destination

God has created us for heaven, and not for earth. He has created us in order to render us eternally happy. The life of time is only the road, the bridge, over which we must pass in order to enter Paradise.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: A Religious Sister's Vocation

Many people say that we should work with social programs and with development programs; we are not here for that. Let everyone do what each can. I beg you sisters, never get mixed up. Love is for today, programs are for the future.

--Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Where There is Love, There is God, Brian Kolodiejchuk, M.C., Ed.

QUOTATION: Teaching the Faith

An educator in the faith cannot risk appearing like a sort of clown who recites a part “by profession”. Rather – to use an image dear to Origen, a writer who was particularly appreciated by Ambrose - he must be like the beloved disciple who rested his head against his Master's heart and there learned the way to think, speak, and act. The true disciple is ultimately the one whose proclamation of the Gospel is the most credible and effective.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Doctors of the Church, St. Ambrose of Milan

QUOTATION: Prayer

For prayer to be effective, our petitions should be for benefits worthily to be expected from God.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: The Soul

The Soul is in God and God is in the soul, just as the fish is in the sea and the sea is in the fish.

--St. Catherine of Siena

QUOTATION: Immortality

We made bad use of immortality, and so ended up dying; Christ made good use of mortality, so that we might end up living.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Kind Words

You will accomplish more by kind words and a courteous manner than by anger or sharp rebuke.

--St. Angela Merici

QUOTATION: The Lord's Day

This, let it be observed, is one important benefit arising from the institution of the Lord's day. Over and above the privilege of being allowed one day in seven for religious festivity, the Christian may accept it as a merciful break in upon his usual employments, lest they should engross him. Most men, indeed, perceive this; they will feel wearied with the dust of this world when Saturday comes, and understand it to be a mercy that they are not obliged to go on toiling without cessation. But still, there are many who, if it were not an express ordinance of religion, would feel tempted, or think it their duty, to continue their secular labours, even though the custom of society allowed them to rest. Many, as it is, are so tempted; that is, at times, when they have some pressing object in view, and think they cannot afford to lose a day: and many always—such, for instance, as are in certain professions, which are not regulated (as trade is, more or less) by times and places. And great numbers, it is to be feared, yield to the temptation; and the evil effect of it shows itself in various miserable ways, even in the overthrow of their health and reason. In all these cases, then, the weekly Services of prayer and praise come to us as a gracious relief, a pause from the world, a glimpse of the third heaven, lest the world should rob us of our hope, and enslave us to that hard master who is plotting our eternal destruction.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, "Religious Worship a Remedy for Excitements" Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 3