QUOTATION: We Must Rise Above the Self

To rise above self-- this is what must be done-- above all feelings, all opinions and dislikes, so that we gaze upon God and bind ourselves to Him by a simple assent.

--St. Jane Frances de Chantal

QUOTATION: The Absurdity of Atheism

It is absurd for the atheist to complain that it is unthinkable for an admittedly unthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into anything

--G.K Chesterton

QUOTATION: To Fast is to Love

One who does not fast for the poor is cheating God. To fast is to love.  Our voluntary fasting should help prevent the obligatory fasts of the poor. Let us fast so that no one else is forced to.

--Pope Francis (Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio), Lenten Message, Ash Wednesday, 2009

QUOTATION: Duties

An overemphasis on rights leads to a disregard for duties. Duties set a limit on rights because they point to the anthropological and ethical framework of which rights are a part, in this way ensuring that they do not become licence. Duties thereby reinforce rights and call for their defence and promotion as a task to be undertaken in the service of the common good. Otherwise, if the only basis of human rights is to be found in the deliberations of an assembly of citizens, those rights can be changed at any time, and so the duty to respect and pursue them fades from the common consciousness. 

--Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate

QUOTATION: Mortal Sin

The assassin has no reply lo make when he is condemned to death. It is the law of retaliation. Now, a single one of my mortal sins put Jesus Christ to death. I am His executioner and His assassin.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Why the Love of Money the Root of All Evil

The Apostle...states that covetousness is the root of all sins (1 Tim 6:10). For in that passage he clearly speaks against those who, because they "will become rich, fall into temptation, and into the snare of the devil . . . for covetousness is the root of all evils." Hence it is evident that he is speaking of covetousness as denoting the inordinate desire for riches. Accordingly, we must say that covetousness, as denoting a special sin, is called the root of all sins, in likeness to the root of a tree, in furnishing sustenance to the whole tree. For we see that by riches man acquires the means of committing any sin whatever, and of sating his desire for any sin whatever, since money helps man to obtain all manner of temporal goods, according to Ecclesiastes 10:19: "All things obey money": so that in this desire for riches is the root of all sins.

--St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, I-II, Q. 84, Art. 1.

QUOTATION: Virtue

Everyone argues in favor of the virtue he practices easily, and exaggerates the difficulties of the virtues that are contrary to it.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Love of God is Salvation

He who does not acquire the love of God will scarcely persevere in the grace of God, for it is very difficult to renounce sin merely through fear of chastisement.

-- St. Alphonsus Liguori

QUOTATION: The Gift of the Mind

God gave us a mind so that we might learn and receive help from him, not so that the mind should be self-sufficient.

--St. John Chrysostom

QUOTATION: Hope and Despair

It is not sinners, but the wicked who should despair; it is not the magnitude of one’s crime, but contempt of God that dashes one’s hopes.

--St. Peter Damian

QUOTATION: How to Talk to God

We must speak to God as a friend speaks to his friend, servant to his master; now asking some favor, now acknowledging our faults, and communicating to Him all that concerns us, our thoughts, our fears, our projects, our desires, and in all things seeking His counsel.

--St. Ignatius Loyola

QUOTATION: What God Wants

God doesn't want something from us. He simply wants us.

--C.S. Lewis

QUOTATION: Invoke Your Guardian Angel

Whenever you are in need of anything, or are facing difficulties, whether great or small, invoke your Guardian Angel, asking him to sort the matter out with Jesus, or to do the particular service you may require.

--St. Josemaria Escriva, The Forge, 931

QUOTATION: It All Boils Down to Love

You may fast regularly, give alms, and pray without ceasing, but as long as you hate your brother, you will not be numbered among the children of God.

--Venerable Louis de Blois

QUOTATION: The Duty of Catholics

Our duty as Catholics is to know the truth, to live the truth, to defend the truth, to share the truth with others, and to suffer for the truth.

--Fr. John A. Hardon

QUOTATION: Loving God

At the beginning one loves God for only his gifts or for the emotions He sends us. He treats us then, ‘like a young woman who is being courted.’ If gifts are no longer given in abundance after true marriage has occurred it is not because the husband’s love is less, but because it is greater. For now he gives himself. It is not the husband’s gifts that his wife loves nor his compliments, nor even the thrill of pleasure she gets from his company. She loves him. The moment the Lover is loved for Himself, then the nature of the gifts ceases to matter. If God withdraws all sensible gifts it is only because He wants the union between the soul and Himself to be more personal and less dependent on His generosity. 

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, That Tremendous Love

QUOTATION: The Protection of Angels

But if these beings, angels, guard you, they do so because they have been summoned by your prayers.

--St. Ambrose of Milan

QUOTATION: Our Eucharistic Lord

It seems to me that Our Lord, on quitting the tabernacle to come to us, says : "I am going to be incarnated in this person. I am going to unite Myself sacramentally to her in order that my personality may take the place of hers. I want to be her principle, and to elevate her being and her actions to the divine Unity. I shall think and will in her soul. I shall live in her body, love in her heart, glorify My Father in her as I glorified Him on earth in My Sacred Humanity. I am going to continue for the glory of My Father, for His love, and for the honor of this creature, My meriting and suffering life. I shall give to her actions a supernatural and divine value, and I shall be the centre of her affections and the principle of a new life, which will be the reproduction of My own life."

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Praying Always

By habitually thinking of the presence of God, we succeed in praying twenty-four hours a day.

--St. Paul of the Cross

QUOTATION: Faith

Faith is not merely a personal reaching out towards things to come that are still totally absent: it gives us something. It gives us even now something of the reality we are waiting for, and this present reality constitutes for us a “proof” of the things that are still unseen.

--Pope Benedict XVI, Spe Salvi, 2007

QUOTATION: Personhood

A person is an entity of a sort to which the only proper and adequate way to relate is love

--Pope St. John Paul II

QUOTATION:Certainty of Faith

Certainty of the faith is not ideology, moralism, or existential assurances, it is the living and nontransferable encounter with a person, with an event, with the living presence of Jesus of Nazareth.

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

QUOTATION: Angels Illuminate Us

An angel can illuminate the thought and mind of man by strengthening the power of vision, and by bringing within its reach some truth which the angel himself contemplates.

--St. Thomas Aquinas

QUOTATION: Humility

Humility repulses Satan and preserves us in the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit. For this reason all the saints, and especially the King of Saints and His Mother, ever honored and cherished this virtue above all others.

--St. Francis de Sales

QUOTATION: Transmitting the Faith

If your heart overflows with faith and love for God, you will find a thousand ways to pass on these feelings to your child.

--St. Irenaeus

QUOTATION: The Love of God

The love of God is not taught. No one has taught us to enjoy the light or to be attached to life more than anything else. And no one has taught us to love the two people who brought us into the world and educated us. Which is all the more reason to believe that we did not learn to love God as a result of outside instruction. In the very nature of every human being has been sown the seed of the ability to love. You and I ought to welcome this seed, cultivate it carefully, nourish it attentively and foster its growth by going to the school of God’s commandments with the help of His grace.

--St Basil the Great

QUOTATION: Evangelization

A Catholic who does not strive to spread his Faith is a parasite on the life of the Church.

--Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

QUOTATION: Stations of the Cross

What pleases our great Master the most is the Stations of the Cross performed with all its significance.The more you suffer pain during the Stations of the Cross,the more you resemble the Divine Crucified. Stations of the Cross performed for our own conversion or that of another has infinite merit. If, through the Stations of the Cross, you succeed in saving a soul, be assured that yours is saved as well.

--St. Andre Bessette, as quoted in Frère André disait souvent... Recueil de paroles de Frère André rapportées par ses amis.

QUOTATION: We Think as We Love

We think as we love. If you love Our Lord, you will think of Him spontaneously and without effort. You will find Him everywhere and in every thing. You will see only Him, and this knowledge is better than all books, it takes the place of them all. But for this one must have Him very really in his heart. The habitual thought follows the affection, and quite naturally attaches itself to it.

--St. Peter Julian Eymard

QUOTATION: Lying

Nothing is more unworthy of a Christian, whose life should be an imitation of God who is the soul of Honor and Truth itself, than to think one thing and say another.

--St Jean Vianney, the Curé of Ars