QUOTATION: Pastoral Care

We wish to make it clear that departure from the Church’s teaching, or silence about it, in an effort to provide pastoral care is neither caring nor pastoral.

--Pope Benedict XVI

QUOTATION: Enemies

We should love and feel compassion for those who oppose us, since they harm themselves and do us good, and adorn us with crowns of everlasting glory.

--St. Anthony Zaccaria

QUOTATION: Your Value

No matter what anybody says to you or about you, it is nothing compared to what you are in God's Eyes.

--Mother Angelica

QUOTATION: Seeing Christ

If you cannot find Christ in the beggar at the church door, you will not find Him in the chalice.

--St. John Chrysostom

QUOTATION: Evangelization

He who converts his neighbour has performed the most practical Christian-political act of all.

--C.S. Lewis, “Meditation on the Third Commandment”, God in the Dock

QUOTATION: The Crucifixion

God is Love. We eventually have to ask ourselves the question; why was Love nailed to a cross?

--Pope St. John Paul II

QUOTATION: The Atheist's Temptation

Just as the believer knows himself to be constantly threatened by unbelief, which he must experience as a continual temptation, so for the unbeliever faith remains a temptation and a threat to his apparently permanently closed world.

--Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), Introduction to Christianity, 1968

QUOTATION: Turning Inward

There is nothing more opposed to the Spirit than settling down and closing oneself off. When we don't walk through the door of faith, that door closes, the Church turns inward, the heart closes in on itself, and fear and bad spirit 'spoil' the Good News.

--Pope Francis (Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio), Letter to the Catechists of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, 2012

QUOTATION: Atheism Must Be Destroyed By Love

Under penalty of death civilization will have to overcome atheism and free itself of its inspiration. This cannot be done by external means of pressure, nor will the finest propaganda serve to achieve it. The workings of reason ─ deep and thorough intellectual enlightenment ─ are necessary. But first of all the testimony of love is needed.

--Jacques Maritain, The Range of Reason

QUOTATION: Predestination

To bear patiently and perseveringly a heavy cross is a great sign of predestination.

--Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, Life Everlasting

QUOTATION: Alms

Give something, however small, to the one in need. For it is not small to one who has nothing. Neither is it small to God, if we have given what we could.

--St. Gregory Nazianzen

QUOTATION: What Believing in God Really Means

To believe in God — for Christians — does not mean simply to believe that God exists, nor merely to believe that He is true. It means to believe by loving, to believe by abandoning oneself to God, uniting and conforming oneself to Him.

--St. Anthony of Padua

QUOTATION: Mockery

Do not worry about the mockery of fools. Remember that the Saints, who always scorned the world and the mundane, have thwarted the world and its maxims.

--St. Padre Pio

QUOTATION: Faith

In faith there is enough light for those who want to believe and enough shadows to blind those who don't.

--Blaise Pascal

QUOTATION: Indecision is No Virtue

Too many people get credit for being good, when they are only being passive. They are too often praised for being broadminded when they are so broadminded they can never make up their minds about anything.

-- Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: How to Invoke St. Joseph

When you invoke St. Joseph, you don’t have to say much. Say, ‘if you were in my place St. Joseph, what would you do? Well, pray for this on my behalf.’

--St. Andre Bessette

QUOTATION: Christ's Example of Humility

The Heavenly Father says to you: " I have given you My Son in this state of Eucharistic annihilation in order to show you how much He loves you and abases Himself for you. Return to Him what He has done for you. Humble yourself. Espouse His humility which He has not willed to renounce even in His glorified state!

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: The Miracle of the Church

The miracle of the Church is that it survives millions of terrible homilies every Sunday.

--Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, (Pope Benedict XVI)

QUOTATION: The Faithful Servant

He who relies on theoretical knowledge alone is not yet a faithful servant: a faithful servant is one who expresses his faith in Christ through obedience to His commandments.

--St. Mark the Ascetic

QUOTATION: Joy

A joyless Catholic is the devil's best tool. A joyful Catholic is God's greatest instrument.

--Scott Hahn

QUOTATION: Temptations

Offer your temptations for the conversion of sinners. When the devil sees you doing this, he is beside himself with rage and makes off, because then the temptation is turned against himself.

--St. Jean Vianney, the Curé of Ars

QUOTATION: How to Get Rid of Atheism

If it is true that absolute atheism is primarily the fruit and condemnation of practical atheism, and its reflected image in the mirror of divine wrath, then it must be said that the cardinal prerequisite for getting rid of absolute atheism is first to get rid of practical atheism. A decorative Christianity is henceforth not enough. A living Christianity is necessary to the world. Faith must be actual, practical, existential faith. To believe in God must mean to live in such a manner that life could not possibly be lived if God did not exist. For the practical believer, gospel justice, gospel attentiveness to everything human must inspire not only the deeds of the saints, but the structure and institutions of common life, and must penetrate to the depths of terrestrial existence.

--Jacques Maritain, The Range of Reason

QUOTATION: Christianity

The more I considered Christianity, the more I found that while it had established a rule and order, the chief aim of that order was to give room for good things to run wild.

--G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

QUOTATION: Proof of the Church's Divine Origin

The Catholic Church is an institution I am bound to hold divine-- but for unbelievers a proof of its divinity might be found in the fact that no merely human institution conducted with such knavish imbecility would have lasted a fortnight.

--Hilaire Belloc

QUOTATION: Evangelization

We always do well to remember that the child, youth, and adult whom God places on our path is neither a vessel to be filled with content, nor a person we must conquer.

-- Pope Francis (Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio), Letter to the Catechists of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires, 2010

QUOTATION: The Clergy on Judgement Day

Let us fear lest the angered judge say to us: If you were the enlighteners of My Church, why have you closed your eyes? If you pretended to be shepherds of the flock, why have you suffered it to stray? Salt of the earth, you have lost your savor. Light of the world, they that sat in darkness and the shadow of death have never seen you shine. You were apostles; who, then, put your apostolic firmness to the test, since you have done nothing but seek to please men? You were the mouth of the Lord, and you have made that mouth dumb. If you allege in excuse that the burden was beyond your strength, why did you make it the object of your ambitious intrigues?

–-St. Charles Borromeo

QUOTATION: Everything Rests on God's Mercy

Even if we have thousands of acts of great virtue to our credit, our confidence in being heard must be based on God’s mercy and His love for men. Even if we stand at the very summit of virtue, it is by mercy that we shall be saved.

--St. John Chrysostom

QUOTATION: Goodness

Evil is not the only thing that is contagious; goodness is as well.

--Pope John Paul II

QUOTATION: Becoming Like Christ

Do not forget that being with Jesus means we shall most certainly meet with his Cross. When we abandon ourselves into God’s hands, he frequently permits us to taste sorrow, loneliness, opposition, slander, defamation, ridicule, coming from both within and outside. This is because he wants to mold us into his image and likeness. He even tolerates that we be called lunatics and be taken for fools.

--St. Josemaria Escriva

QUOTATION: Fault-Finding in Oneself

Do not stunt your spiritual life by looking always for you faults. Think of God’s love. Never despair! Not until God ceases to be infinitely good and you begin to be infinitely wicked have you a right to be hopeless.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Taste and See

"O taste and see that the Lord is good!" (Ps. 34:8, 1 Peter 2:3) Tasting alone leads to seeing. Let us think of the disciples of Emmaus: it is only in convivial communion with Jesus, only in the breaking of the bread that their eyes were opened. Only in the truly experienced communion with the Lord were they able to see.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Homily, June 29, 2009

QUOTATION: Patience

I say to you, then, in your pains, in your dryness, in your weakness, in all that springs from the old man, and in all kinds of trials, have patience even with God, have pity on your own soul.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Perseverance

Do not be surprised if you fall back into your old ways every day. Do not be disheartened, but resolve to do something positive about it; and, without question, the angel who stands guard over you will honor your perseverance.

--St John Climacus

QUOTATION: Doubt

To live in a state of doubt is a highly civilized attitude as regards the infinite potentialities and future constructions of science in its deciphering of phenomena. But to live in a state of doubt as regards, not phenomena, but the ultimate realities the knowledge of which is a natural possibility, privilege, and duty for human intelligence, is to live more miserably than animals, which at least tend with instinctive and buoyant certitude toward the ends of their ephemeral life.

--Jacques Maritain, Education at the Crossroads

QUOTATION: Faith

We all must have the faith of children, but the doctrine of theologians.

--St. Josemaria Escriva