QUOTATION: Meekness

Meekness, the greatest of virtues, is reckoned among the beatitudes. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land.” For that blessed land, the heavenly Jerusalem, is not the spoil of warriors who have conquered, but the hoped-for inheritance of the meek, who patiently endure the evils of this life.

--St. Basil the Great

QUOTATION: Mercy

Just as a thought is made manifest through actions and words, so is our future reward through the impulses of the heart. Thus a merciful heart will receive mercy, while a merciless heart will receive the opposite.

--St Mark the Ascetic

QUOTATION: Heresy

 

Now it is manifest that he who adheres to the teaching of the Church, as to an infallible rule, assents to whatever the Church teaches; otherwise, if, of the things taught by the Church, he holds what he chooses to hold, and rejects what he chooses to reject, he no longer adheres to the teaching of the Church as to an infallible rule, but to his own will. Hence it is evident that a heretic who obstinately disbelieves one article of faith, is not prepared to follow the teaching of the Church in all things; but if he is not obstinate, he is no longer in heresy but only in error. Therefore it is clear that such a heretic with regard to one article has no faith in the other articles, but only a kind of opinion in accordance with his own will.

--St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, II-II, q. 5, a. 3.

QUOTATION: Business

Business is a vocation, and a noble vocation, provided that those engaged in it see themselves challenged by a greater meaning in life; this will enable them truly to serve the common good by striving to increase the goods of this world and to make them more accessible to all.

--Pope Francis, Evangelii Gaudium, 203

QUOTATION: Accepting God's Will

Those who love God do not protest, whatever He may ask of them, nor doubt His kindness when He sends them difficult hours. A sick person takes medicine without asking the physician to justify its bitter taste because the patient trusts the doctor’s knowledge; so the soul that has sufficient faith accepts all the events of life as gifts of God in the serene assurance that God knows best.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Zeal

It is the present fashion to call Zeal by the name of intolerance, and to account intolerance the chief of sins; that is, any earnestness for one opinion above another concerning God's nature, will, and dealings with man,—or, in other words, any earnestness for the Faith once delivered to the Saints, any earnestness for Revelation as such. Surely, in this sense, the Apostles were the most intolerant of men: what is it but intolerance in this sense of the word to declare, that "he that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life;" that "they that obey not the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord;" that "neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor covetous, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God;" that we must not even "eat" with a brother who is one of such; that we may not "receive into our houses," or "bid God speed" to any one who comes to us without the "doctrine of Christ"?

--Blessed John Henry Newman, "Christian Zeal", Parochial and Plain Sermons, Volume 2.

QUOTATION: God's Patience

Is not God patience itself toward souls, toward you? Does He become infuriated and violently dash things to pieces? No. He awaits the fruit of His seed years and years. He daily does the little that our cooperation permits Him to do. He recommences what our faults have demolished. He is the grace itself of patience and our model.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: The Good News

The message that electrified the first century was not, 'Love your enemies,' but, 'He is risen.'

--Msgr. Ronald Knox

QUOTATION: Detachment

Free yourself from inordinate love or hate of earthly things. For Where the Lord finds an empty vessel He pours down his blessing.

--Thomas a Kempis

QUOTATION: Gossip

Whenever you tell the shortcomings of someone who is not present, your tongue has made a harp for the music of the Devil.

--St. Ephraim the Syrian

QUOTATION: Prayer

Prayer is the sure way that leads to holiness. Alas! we easily enter on the road to perdition when we neglect prayer. The prayer which humbles the soul, which inflames her with love and excites her to the practice of virtue, is never subject to illusion. In prayer the soul is united to God through love, He who, on account of the duties of his state of life, cannot devote much time to prayer, need not be troubled; the exact fulfilment of his duties, with a pure intention, having only God in view, is an excellent prayer.

--St. Paul of the Cross

QUOTATION: Sanctification

My obligation to aim at sanctification at all costs must be ever present in my mind, but it must be a serene and tranquil preoccupation, not wearisome and overmastering.

--Pope St. John XXIII, Journal of a Soul

QUOTATION: Do Not Despair

Beware of despairing about yourself; you are commanded to place your trust in God, and not in yourself.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: Prayer Life

If your prayer life is boring, you are focusing on yourself, not JESUS, not the needy.

--Pope Francis

QUOTATION: Pride

The devil laughs. He is perfectly content to see you becoming chaste and brave and self-controlled provided, all the time, he is setting up in you the Dictatorship of Pride - just as he would be quite content to see your chilblains cured if he was allowed, in return, to give you cancer.

--C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

QUOTATION: Why Turn the Other Cheek

Why turn the other cheek? Because hate multiplies like a seed. If one preaches hate and violence to ten men in a row, and tells the first man to strike the second, and the second to strike the third, the hatred will envelop all ten. The only way to stop this hate is for one man (say the fifth in line), to turn his other cheek. Then the hatred ends. It is never passed on. Absorb violence for the sake of the Savior, Who will absorb sin and die for it. The Christian law is that the innocent shall suffer for the guilty.

--Archbishop Fulton Sheen, Life of Christ

QUOTATION: Holiness is Necessary for Salvation

Surely, if we are to be saved, it is not by keeping ourselves just above the line of reprobation, and living without any anxiety and struggle to serve God with a perfect heart.

--Blessed John Henry Newman

QUOTATION: Jesus' Patience is the Glory of the Father

Our Lord never so much glorified His Father as in His failures among men, and by bearing with patience the imperfections, the coarseness, and the weakness of His Apostles; by His patience in awaiting the will and the hour of His Father in order to act; by His patience in succeeding only in the measure that His Father willed during His public life; and by His patience in His Passion, in which He consented to go through, what would naturally annihilate His work forever.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: The Lukewarm

The lukewarm do not embrace the cross; they merely drag it along.

--St. Teresa of Avila

QUOTATION: Becoming a New Person

YOU cannot make yourself different. JESUS came to give you a new heart, a new spirit, a new mind, and a new body.

--Fr. Henri Nouwen

QUOTATION: Christ's Sacrifice

During the supper, Jesus immolated Himself; on the Cross, He was immolated by others

--St. Ephraim, Hymn on the Crucifixion as quoted by Pope Benedict XVI, Homily on the Solemnity of Corpus Christi, June 11, 2009.

QUOTATION: What Halts Spiritual Progress

I must consider those failures of mine which are usually called small, and which are generally overlooked. These are the cause of the slow, halting progress of my spiritual life. It is not a question of greater or less condescension or kindness on the part of God, it is a question of man's co-operation with him. His graces are always available; it is our failings which prevent their being of use to us.

--Pope St. John XXIII, Journal of a Soul

QUOTATION: When Life Begins

Life has a very long history, but each of us has a very definite beginning—- the moment of conception.

--Professor Jerome Lejeune

QUOTATION: What Christ Offers

I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden.

--St. Augustine

QUOTATION: No Part-Time Christians

We cannot be Christians part-time. If Christ is at the center of our lives, he is present in all that we do.

--Pope Francis

QUOTATION: Fighting the Current

When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind.

--C. S. Lewis

QUOTATION: Tailor-Made Divinity

Just as there are those who believe we should change morality to suit our amorality, so there are those who believe we should change God to suit our godlessness.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: We Are All Sinners

Let us not forget, in our lawful and fitting horror at evil men, that they have souls, and that they know not what they do, when they oppose the Truth. Let us not forget, that we are sons of sinful Adam as well as they, and have had advantages to aid our faith and obedience above other men.

--Blessed John Henry Newman, "Use of Saints' Days", Parochial and Plain Sermons, Vol. 2